Hip Cities and Lost Souls
Chapter Eleven
Dan steered the van off the freeway three
exits early into the tangled east end of Hollywood. Straights called it the
Silver Lake district. The hippies called it "the other end." A
quieter version of Hollywood Boulevard, less flashy, but with enough hip life
to still be comfortable.
Dan's cough had grown progressively worse till
he sounded as if he might die behind the wheel. Sarah perked up, her humor
improving as the more familiar glitter of Vermont Boulevard appeared around
them. But the edge had frayed for Lance, the psychedelic paint peeling from
headshop signs, and record stores, and boutiques. He felt it coming to an end
like the slowing wheels of a train long out of fuel.
On Hollywood, German delicatessens appeared,
part of the older city that had moved aside to accommodate the hippies, their
hand-painted signs seeming more real to Lance than any of the hippie stuff,
popping out from their exile as the hippies vanished.
But the hippies that remained cluttered the
street corners or doorways of out-of-business shops like Depression-era
laborers waiting for work, their once-posh clothing now little better than
rags.
"Free Press!" One of
them yelled as Dan downshifted for another light. The dark, drugged eyes of the
lost soul peered over the lip of the underground newspaper, pleading with them
for a sale. The two-inch headline read: NARCS REVEALED!
Dan glanced twice then paled.
"Get one of those," he sputtered as
the light changed and Lance fumbled in his pocket for a quarter. Behind the
van, traffic beeped, L.A.'s impatience echoing from the store front enclosures
like shouting voices. Lance dumped a handful of change into the poor freak's
dirty hands then grabbed a paper.
"Jesus!" the freak howled.
"Thanks, man."
Dan jammed the van into gear and rolled away.
"Well?" Dan asked around a series of
coughs, trying to read the paper over Lance's shoulder and still steer the van.
Traffic thickened the closer they got to Vine with both machine and human
traffic forcing Dan's attention back to the road.
"They've got the names and photographs in
here," Lance said, thumbing through the pages. The whole paper seemed to
have been given over to an extensive list of narcotics agents. Most were city
cops, but a number of state and federal cops had also made the list. Lance
stopped at one entry. The old photograph did not do Demetre justice. The face
looked too young and not at all black. It even lacked the scar that marred the
man's face, making him look almost innocent, a social worker's face with dreams
of saving the world. "Demetre's here."
The list beneath the photograph read like a
resume: big time busts in New York, Miami, Chicago, L.A.-- and all that before
he'd reached thirty. Some editor had added a footnote claiming Demetre as the
hottest commodity in the Federal anti-drug arsenal, a supernarc allowed to hunt
anyone anywhere at any time.
Other things had been listed, too. Dark and personal
things sifted down into a few precious dates and numbers. Like the death of his
wife and kids. A car crash? A mob revenge? Those details were missing as was
the internal rage they must have boiled inside the man.
"Is Bobo there?" Dan asked, craning
his neck to look again.
"How should I know?" Lance asked.
"What does he look like?"
Dan snorted, then pulled the van to the curb--
a yellow stretch marked with a sign saying: No stopping or standing. He
grabbed the newspaper and wafted through the pages, hemming and hawing over
familiar faces, but sighing at the end, visibly relieved. "That's some
comfort anyway. He's not a narc."
"You thought he was?" Chris asked,
leaning forward, resting hands and chin on the back of Dan's seat.
"One never knows," Dan said, pushing
the wrinkled paper back towards Lance. "It's nice to be sure." Still,
his frown had deepened as he re-engaged the gears.
At Vine, the fast-track part of "the
boulevard" began, a stretch of about ten blocks often compared to San
Francisco's Haight-Ashbury and Berkeley's Telegraph Ave. None of the glitter
had faded here, headshops and record shops glistening in lights, tinsel and
day-glow colors, a rainbow of acid imagination dripping from each window as if
from waterfalls-- too much to stare at, even straight, but tripping, it
"blew one's mind", making it part of the drug parade.
Dan pulled the van closer to the curb and
slowed, passing the orange and blue Rexall drugstore sign on the left. Traffic
swarmed around the driver's side, people glaring and cursing for Dan's crawling
pace. But he studied the sidewalk without apparent concern.
"You're going to slow," Chris
growled, twisting around in the back for a view behind them. "The cops'll
think we're trying to score."
"I'm looking for Bobo," Dan snapped
back.
"We'll you're not going to find him
standing on a street corner like a hooker."
"Why not? I might get lucky."
"Look, clown," Chris said, leaning
over the seat, her mouth an inch from Dan's ear. "I'm carrying."
"What?" Dan exploded.
"And this is the first time you're telling us? What if we'd gotten stopped
on the road?"
"In the desert? Who the hell cares about
us there?"
"Some local yokel trying play it
big," Dan said.
"Forget about the desert, Dan," Chris
said. "This is L.A., and you're advertising our return to every pig in
town. Speed up or let me out. I don't want to spend the night in a cell."
Dan answered her with a grimace and a growl,
shifting the gear into second as he pulled back into the flow of traffic.
"One pass up and back," he said. "Then we'll head home."
"Okay," Chris said. "But don't
drag it out."
Lance peered over the back of the seat. Chris
gripped one of her suitcases in both arms, her expression a chiseled and barely
controlled panic. He had seen such expressions before on the faces of villagers
in Vietnam, waiting out mortar attacks. Only it wasn't Cong she seemed to fear
as she stared out the back window.
He straightened and studied the street.
Morning didn't sit well with Hollywood. Too stark for a place built on mirrors,
even with the glitter. Night with its circus of lights made it work. Now, the
sidewalk was a wash of straggling panhandles, jesus freaks and tourists,
walking the endless procession, stopping at the appropriate shrines. A line of
hawaiian-shirted people waited outside the Wax Museum, and another line a few
blocks up at Grauman's Chinese Theater. None seemed to fit the description of
Bobo Dan had given.
But his own face floated in the passing store
front windows, gaunt and weary from too many miles on the road. He looked much
the way he had his first days back in the states after Vietnam, the blank stare
of a shell-shocked hero. Too many bullets. Too much bullshit. He didn't quite
understand how he could pull things together again without a grub stake. The
loss of the last two thousand dollars had snapped something inside him. And
being back here only emphasized the point.
Start over? In party city?
One glance at Sarah's face told him the
futility of that, her gaze searching the sidewalk at the hip boutiques, as if
calculating how to continue life as a hippie queen.
People had admired her nonchalance, for the
money spent throwing lavish parties at their McCadden apartment. She had
reveled in it, the center of a non-conforming social set.
The uneasiness started again in Lance's
stomach. He closed his eyes and pressed himself back against the seat, slowly
taking long breaths, wanting to go home, wanting to go anywhere else-- half
willing to climb the steep sides of the San Gabriel mountains where the white
dots of downed crashed piper cubs competed with the sparse green.
"We're being followed," Chris said
sharply.
Lance's eyes jerked open. Dan's gaze rose,
staring hard into the rearview mirror. "I don't see anything."
"Three cars back," Chris said.
"It looks like an unmarked cop car."
Lance saw it in the side mirror, a weaving
blue Buick with two stern faces inside. It reminded him less of police than the
Denver men on the mountain.
"I'll slow down and let them pass,"
Dan said.
"No!" Chris barked. "Not here.
Turn off and pretend to park. We don't need to attract more attention than we
have to."
Dan turned sharply right, off into the less
populated streets North of the Boulevard. "Still with us?"
Chris crawled onto the bed and peered out from
the corner of the window, her prone form like a soldiers stretched out in a
ditch, waiting for the enemy to strike.
"Yep," she said and slipped forward
again. "Look, fellahs, I don't mean to leave you in a lurch, but I'm going
to jump ship."
"Here?"
"After the next turn slow down. I'll slip
out the side door. If all goes well, I'll meet you later at the
apartment."
"You don't know where it is," Dan
grumbled, obviously disliking the whole procedure.
"So tell me already," Chris said,
glancing nervously back at the car as it turned onto the street behind the van.
Dan mumbled the address, then made the next
right. He slowed just enough for Chris to make her leap out the side door, then
sped up again in time for the appearance of the Buick.
The blue car's tires screeched as it hurried
to close the space between them, missing the lone, slumped figure of Chris now
seated on the park bench near the curb.
"So much for a quiet welcome home,"
Dan said.
But Lance said nothing, his hands gripping the
edge of the seat, the whole experience with Chris reminding him of a chopper
drop-- with only the bodies and bullets missing.
"You're leading them back to the
place," he said, glancing back again. The faces of the figures looked
stark and straight behind the untinted glass.
"So?" Dan growled. "What's the
point of driving around in circles now. We have to go home sooner or later and
we'll never lose them in this jalopy."
Lance saw some sense in this, but still felt
queazy, as if the apartment had always been a place of refuge immune to the
trifles of the city-- like the roach-infested room he'd had in East L.A. Now,
it seemed he'd drag the whole Denver thing back to it, killers and all.
Dan turned onto Vine, crossed Hollywood again,
then Sunset-- the car behind them inches from their bumper.
"They really don't want to lose us, do
they?" Dan grumbled, sliding through the rigmarole of shifting gears,
cursing over sticking second. He made the left onto Fountain, the familiar
sights of the old neighborhood striking Lance with homesick-like pangs. Ranch
Market. The park. Even the bench upon which he'd sometimes sat staring at
traffic.
Home?
No, never! Yet...
The feeling grew more intense as Dan turned
the van onto McCadden, the tilted palm trees swaying with some breeze too high
up to relieve the smoggy street, stucco-sided buildings lining either sidewalk.
Boring opulence complete with balconies and polished cars. Again an echo of
life with his uncle, but altered, a crude imitation of suburban life bearing
the subtle touch of perpetual vacation.
"Hey, hey!" Dan laughed. "Our
shadow didn't turn with us."
Lance twisted around in the seat in time to
see the Buick's rear bumper vanish. "That's odd," he said, even more alarmed.
"Why wouldn't they keep after us?"
"Because they probably already know where
we're going," Dan said.
This settled even less well with Lance.
"You really think so?"
"It seems likely," Dan said
"How?"
"Don't ask me, pal, I'm just as confused
as you are," Dan said and pulled the van to the curb. After so many miles
of spinning wheels, arrival seemed anti-climatic. And Lance stared at the
apartment building with some sense of despair. Not only had they come back to
where they'd started, but a good deal worse off-- and after all his dreams of
life in the mountains...
"Well?" Dan asked. "Do we
unpack now or wait until after we've rested?"
"Pull in," Sarah said, her bright
eyes brimming with enthusiasm. It must have felt like home to her. "I
don't want to rest until everything's back where it should be."
Still, something didn't seem right. Lance
looked into the mirror on his side. The street behind them remained empty, but
he couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.
Maybe it was only the neighbors again, alarmed
by the return after a few weeks missing. Sarah's entertaining had raised some
brows among the largely straight and retired neighborhood, freaks of every ilk
coming and going-- and at all hours of the day and night. And God only knew how bad the van looked
limping home like this with dented side and bullet holes, some scene straight
out of Easy Rider.
"I'm not sure we should just rush
in," Lance said, drawing a long look from Dan.
"Why not?"
"Don't know exactly, but something
doesn't seem right to me."
"Now isn't that, odd," Sarah said,
squinting out the windshield at their balcony and the line of slatted windows
that ran along the upstairs landing.
"What?" Dan asked sharply.
"The light's on in your room. I'm sure I
turned them all off before we left."
Dan and Lance stared up. The light squeaked
through the partly open window like an unblinking yellow eye. Lance's hand fell
to the door handle, as did Dan's.
"Just what I needed!" Dan spat.
"Cops on my bumper and now this! Why not? It all fits the goddamn pattern
of my life! Come on! Come on! Let's get this over with."
Ground floor sheltered them in a tangle of
descending stairs and shadows of apartment balconies. Dan slid into indented
door of the apartment near stairs, dragging Lance behind. "We can't just
go up there," he muttered. "It's too exposed. If someone's inside
they could..."
Lance didn't need the picture drawn. He'd seen
the result of careless grunts charging into village hooches without back up,
blasted by hidden machine gun fire, or blown to pieces by mines.
"I could climb up to the balcony,"
Dan said, glancing up at the balcony that overhung the driveway by a good six
feet.
"How?" Lance asked.
"The ledge," Dan said, pointing to
the windows near by. It was possible, but just barely and if someone waited up
top, Dan would make an even easier target.
"Let's play this straight," Lance
said. The feeling he'd gotten earlier in the van seemed to have faded somewhat,
coming from another direction. "This is my landlady's apartment. She sees
your ugly feet in her window she'll likely call the cops."
"All right," Dan said. "But you
go first."
Lance stepped out of the doorway and up the
stairs, the scent of abandoned home striking him with each step, wind-swept
dust streaked across the concrete and metal.
"Look," Dan hissed, grabbing at
Lance's arm. The imprint of a shoed foot showed in the dust, flat-footed and
deep, but patternless.
"Someone straight," Dan mumbled.
"A cop or PI."
"Or your friends from Denver?" Lance
asked, recalling the straight faces behind the blue Buick's glass. And yet, the
imprint looked large, fitting more the bear-size of a man like Demetre.
Dan peered up the stairs, shivered. He seemed
to have forgotten that part of it, especially after the cops in Phoenix, his
whole thought bent on getting back here to Bobo. Now, Denver reshaped itself in
his eyes, like large, dark hawk whose shadow he couldn't shake.
"I guess we ought to find out, eh?"
he said in a slightly choked voice.
"I suppose so," Lance said and
continued the climb, coming out on the landing above from where he could still
see Sarah's face frozen in place behind the van windshield at the end of the
drive, a pale little ghosts peering up, waiting to come home, waiting to start
her old life again. Lance resisted, the keys catching in his pocket as he tried
to bring them forth. He wanted to go back and tell her it was too dangerous,
that they would have to head north immediately.
But on what? Fumes? He could hardly feed
themselves with the cash he had in his pocket, let a lone buy gasoline for the
long haul up the coast.
He sighed and pushed the key into the lock. It
stuck, then slowly turned, metal shavings pouring out as he freed the key
again. Nothing sounded, not even the hinges, as he pushed the door gently in.
Yet the smell of old incense struck him, bringing back the images of countless
parties.
A face appeared from behind the door. Mike's
face, thick with caution.
"In quick," the man hissed, grabbing
Lance's hand and tugging him forward. Dan's jaw fell, but instantly followed,
as Mike sealed the door again behind them, peering out the peep hole, then back
at them.
"About time you got here," he said
sharply. "We've been waiting for hours."
Lance leaned against the wall, slipping
slightly as he knees weakened. The old place pressing hard against his chest,
bringing back all the horrors. Worse than memories of Nam in some ways.
Haunting. Like jail.
"We had some trouble on the road,"
Dan explained, lighting a cigarette. Marie smiled up from the floor where she
and Mike had made a bed of coats, her open blouse like an invitation.
"You've had trouble here, too," Mike
said. "From the looks of things."
"What kind of trouble?" Lance asked,
alarmed again.
"The place has been searched at least
twice. And finger-printed."
"Twice?" Dan asked through a haze of
smoke.
"Look for yourself," Mike said,
motioning towards the large front room, a room now cluttered with broken
nick-knacks Sarah had left behind. Holes had been punched in the walls.
"Someone was looking for something,"
Dan noted.
"And was peeved when he didn't find it.
But that happened a week or two ago."
"Just after we left," Lance said,
shocked, feeling suddenly violated again, the way he had after the search in
Phoenix.
"The question is why?" Mike asked.
Lance laughed with an edge of hysteria to his
voice. "Looking for secret treasures, of course."
"Huh?"
Dan nodded. "Lance and Sarah had a
reputation in town," he explained. "People seemed to think they had
tons of money."
"Hidden in the walls?" Mike said.
"If it's who I think," Dan said.
"We're lucky we weren't here."
"Who? Bobo?"
"Billy Night Rider," Lance said
slowly, reconstructing the miserable collection of features which served the
man as a face, scars upon scars from thousands of fights. "He hassled us a
lot when we walked on the Boulevard."
"A local biker," Dan informed a
puzzled Mike. "Started his own motor cycle gang when the Hell's Angeles
wouldn't have him."
"What about the second search?" Dan
asked.
"From all the fingerprint powder they
left, I'd say it was the cops," Mike said, seating himself next to Marie.
"But why search an empty apartment?"
Lance asked.
"For information," Mike said.
"The fingerprints would provide all the history they'd need."
The conversation between the Demetre and the
FBI man roared back. They had known too much. He shuddered and felt less safe
here than he had. He became aware of voices outside, the high pitched ranting
voice of his land lady and the weaker voice of Sarah.
"Sarah?" Lance moaned and dove for
the door.
"Hold on there," Mike snapped,
jumping up and grabbing Lance back.
"Look before you leap."
He pushed Lance towards the glass door to the
balcony, pinching back the curtain an inch so they could see out. Sarah had
grown impatient waiting and had followed, stopped mid-driveway by a blue-haired
old lady waving a finger in her face.
"It's Mrs. Landsford," Lance said.
"She'll be wanting rent."
"Well, so much for keeping your return
quiet," Mike mumbled. "But you'd better get down there."
Lance yanked open the door and stepped out
onto the landing again, the L.A. sun now stark and hot, like a spotlight. He
felt naked and alone, and watched. Where were the eyes this time? Another
apartment? Or one of the Cadillacs parked along the curb.
"Hello there," he said cheerily, as
his hand gripped the railing.
"Oh, there you are!" the blue-haired
woman said, turning to reveal the full horror of her face, a wrinkled flesh a
grayish brown from too many hours at the tanning salon, painted over with the
atrociously colored make-up currently in fashion. "I have a bone to pick
with you, Mr. Drummond."
"One minute," Lance said, and
circled around the inner rail, then down the stairs. Up close, the woman's
squatness became apparent-- a quiet ordinary middle American hidden behind the
tan and make-up.
"If it's about the rent, I'm sorry,"
Lance said. "We've been away."
The woman's painted brow rose high into her
wrinkled forehead. "I know," she said. "And there have been
strange characters wandering around here the whole time. I yelled at them and
nearly had to call the police when they wouldn't go away."
"Characters? Doing what?"
"Nothing. That's the point. They'd stand
right here and stare up at your window for hours on end."
Lance shivered, but braved a smile. "Well
we're home now," he said. "If they come back. We'll chase them
away."
The woman seemed satisfied with that, but
didn't make a move towards her apartment. "You mentioned rent?" she
asked.
"We just got back this minute,"
Lance said. "Would monday be all right?"
She hesitated then nodded. "But no
later," she said. "I've got bills to pay, too, you know."
***********
"I'm going to find a job," Lance
said, the empty apartment grinning back at him. Sarah had cleaned up the
clutter clucking her tongue, refusing to bring up anything until she'd
finished. And still, she glared at the holes as if they upset her future social
agenda.
What would people say?
She'd wanted instant repair, but settled for a
covering of posters and wall hangings.
Later, she told Lance, You can fix
them right.
But without rent, later seemed like never. But
Lance said nothing of this. Maybe he could squeeze enough out of a paycheck to
keep the place.
"A job?" Sarah said, pausing, a lock
of loose hair hanging across her forehead and eyes. She brushed it away with
her sleeve. "What kind of job?"
Her tone suggested the usual prelude to a
fight. The word "Job" implied other things like an ordinary American
life-style, something she appalled. "We're not starting in with this
husband and wife stuff again, are we?"
"No," Lance said, letting the word
linger in the air between them. "But rent would be nice."
"If rent's all you're worried about, I
could go do a gig at the..."
"No!" Lance shouted, leaping
up from his seat in the corner as if he expected her to make a move for the
door just then.
"It's only a few photographs," Sarah
said, putting the dust pan and broom down as she advanced. "You act as if
I was going out to..."
"Don't say it!" he growled, holding
his hands over his ears, feeling stupid for it, like a child again in his
uncle's house refusing to hear things that disturbed him.
Only photographs?
Nude and lewd photographs which she and the
photographers claimed as the right and proper road to the movies.
All the stars started like this, kid,
one photographer growled around a thoroughly chewed cigar.
"We had an agreement, Sarah," Lance
said. "No more of that, remember?"
"But you just said we need money."
"Not that badly. I'll find a job."
"But you don't know how to do
anything."
"I'll work it out," he said, and
tore at the door handle.
"Hey, where are you going?"
"To find a fucking job," Lance
growled, slamming the door behind him.
***********
Home again, Dan thought, floating down
Hollywood Boulevard as if he owned it. Despite claims otherwise, it had never
been Haight-Ashbury here-- and for that he treasured it. No illusions of love
and peace, only survivors, more ruthless and dogged than Wall Street had ever
been. More 42nd street, though the pimps, dealers, prostitutes and other
purveyors of pleasure all had deep California tans.
This close to noon and people actually began
to appear, poking their heads out of doorways and windows. Gays, hippies,
bikers and pimps-- with dirty old men and bag ladies in between. The tourists
took pictures of them all, as if the town was all one wax museum with a few
exhibits moving. Free Press people shouted out their headlines, drawing grim
expressions from the uniformed cops.
Freedom of Speech, man, Dan said to himself,
walking passed the bumper to the car, carefully keeping his feet on the
sidewalk.
Don't need no jaywalking tickets today,
he thought, or time in the slammer.
Farther down, the competing religions began,
Jesus Freaks trying to out-scream the Hari Krishnas in saving songs.
Save your soul for a dollar, man, their
tight faces seemed to say. A quarter bought a prayer.
Bobo's touch was everywhere, though not his
face, an electricity crackling from one dealer to the next that Dan barely
understood. Sly, careful, paranoid glances. He stopped and asked the more
familiar faces.
"Bobo, man? No, no, haven't seen him,
man."
Hadn't seen him, but fear his presence,
telling Dan with their eyes for him not to ask more, as if there was danger in
knowing more.
"Go away, man, you're bringing on bad
vibes."
And some had gone away. Old dealers who'd
become institutions. Absent from their familiar spaces. Some replaced by
nervous kids. Other doorways and corners uncomfortably empty.
Dan took the whole walk up and down the ten
block stretch, pausing for his usual gawk into Pecks and Frederick, or the
plaster shop near Rexall where the busts of Elvis and Nixon and Hitler
dominated the window. The mad creator, speckled with dust, lifted his hand in
remembrance as Dan moved on.
Hamburger Palace looked even odder without
people. Even the bikers had abandoned the place, leaving a sea of orange tables
and plastic chairs, and silly college kids in striped uniforms flipping
burgers. Word had long been out about the cameras and mikes, and edgy cops in
white shirts waiting to bust dealers using the booths.
The cops had vanished, too, taking their
cameras. But one lone dealer remained, slumped into a corner booth.
"Hinchcliff, old man," Dan said,
sliding into the seat across from the man. "Where is everybody?"
The same look of utter horror greeted him. But
Dan wasn't going to take any more rhetoric. He wanted to know why people were
scared.
"Keep your voice down, man,"
Hinchcliff said, brushing long strands of blond, dirty hair from his face. More
troll than human after so much time on the street. He smelled as if he'd been
sleeping in a park or sewer.
"I'm just trying to get the dope on
what's happened around here."
"You've been away," the man said,
his blue-green eyes struggling to focus in on Dan's face. Quaalude material. Or
Reds. Supposedly a cure of the shakes. But Dan didn't believe it.
"Yeah to Denver."
"Then you haven't heard about me
yet?"
"What's to hear?"
"People are saying I'm a rat," the
man said, clutching at Dan's hands on the table. "But it's not true. I
swear it. I'm not the one who's finking on people."
"I didn't say you were," Dan said,
removing his hands to his lap. "But tell me more."
"It's a nightmare, man," Hinchcliff
moaned, hands rising to the side of his head. "The cops have been dragging
people off the street."
"Here, in Hollywood?"
"All around, man. Like they knew ahead of
time what they were doing and what they had."
"And what led people to think you
finked?"
The man gave something of a shrug.
"I got nagged early. Cops caught me
coming from a deal. They knew everything. But didn't catch the dude with the
dope and had to let me go. Still word got round that I'd made a deal with them
to get off. It stuck."
Somehow word got around? Dan felt the
tingle of Bobo's touch. The rage rose in him again the way it had in Denver. He
slammed up out of the booth.
"But I didn't do it!" Hinchcliff
moaned, mistaking Dan's reaction.
"I know," Dan said and charged back
out onto the street, as if following a scent.