Hip Cities and Lost Souls
Chapter 13
Lance heard the party two blocks away, like
voices echoing in a canyon: Jimi Hendrix's guitar licks emphasizing the silence
of the other buildings. When he turned the corner, he saw the apartment windows
flickering ominously with the sharp blue fire of strobe lights-- an open
advertisement for a police raid.
And it got worse. People stood around at the
end of the drive laughing, and others sat smoking pot on the steps up. Even the
balcony held an over-flow of stoned people, many of them strangers, too young
to be part of the set he and Sarah had known before leaving.
"What the fuck are you people doing out
here?" Lance asked those in the drive. They looked at him with that
indignant social air that had become all too common in Hollywood-- the
outsider-insider head-trip that annoyed Lance to no end. As if the love &
peace generation had become country club to which one had to be invited.
Acid's the door, man, the freaks once
told him. You don't take it, you don't see like we do.
But his face convinced them to move back
towards the stairs, and he herded them up, the crowd there joining them in the
climb, glaring back at Lance, saying without words he was bringing them down.
A bummer, man, the old crowd had told
him. You're just one big bummer.
His uncle would have called him practical.
Practical in not wanting attention drawn to himself or his private little drug
trips when he took them. Practical in refusing to let some stone asshole create
that attention for him.
"Up," he said. "And into the
house. I don't want you people out here."
He cast a glance back towards his landlady's
apartment. For some reason it was dark, indicating she had gone out for the
evening. A bit of precious luck that he wouldn't waste.
"Up," he ordered and the freaks
climbed, reluctantly to the landing above, and slowly re-entered the apartment.
Once inside, Lance saw the reason for the
over-flow. Wall to wall people. There was hardly space in the front room to
stand-- though some lucky people near the walls had carved out little love-nests,
their naked forms squirming like pink worms in the strobing lights.
At the far end of the room, near the mouth of
the kitchen, another space had been cleared for dancing-- a stereo with two
huge black-faced speakers blared out varying types of trip music. Hendrix had
been replaced by the less-talents droning of Vanilla Fudge.
The dancing amounted to little more than
people swaying in place. Even had there been more room, they would have still
swayed, led on by a huge, blond-haired man Lance recognized from the old days,
the arms outstretched with palms exposed.
"Can you feel it, children?" the
huge man said. "Can you feel the vibes now moving through you? The fabric
of reality calling to you, begging you to come down to it?"
"We feel it, Dale," some of the
swaying trippers said, looking about as conscious as the stumbling drunks on
Sunset Boulevard. "We feel it."
Lance felt sick and searched though the faces
till he found the one he wanted and shoved his way through the human forest,
grabbing Dan by the collar and dragging him to the wall.
"What the fuck is going on here?" he
hissed into the face. "Are you trying to get us busted or what?"
The stoned Dan grinned at Lance, long brown
cigarette dangling from his lip Bogart-style. But his eyes lacked the flat,
nearly dead look of a tripper.
"We're safe, pal-- there might be cops
outside watching, but they won't do anything."
"What?" Lance growled and glanced
towards the balcony where more people gathered, imagining the army of blue
uniforms spilling over the railing. "If they're watching..."
"Relax, pal," Dan said, patting his
shoulder. "They're just out there to see who all's coming to this
shindig."
Insanity!
One didn't play games like this with the
police, taunting them as if they wouldn't react. Lance knew better. He'd seen
the fire deep in Demetre's eyes, the embers of some deep fury that would not
stay dormant forever.
Lance wanted to shake the smugness out of
Dan's eyes and make him understand the fragile of balance of power upon which
their freedom rested, this formidable idea that there were bigger fish than
them to catch.
Lance felt the ill wind coming with its
impending violence. Like the crisp jungle air just before a fire fight in Nam,
each detail slipping into place.
"What about my landlady?" Lance
asked. "I saw her lights out. Has she heard any of this?"
"Not likely. I saw her leaving before the
party started."
Thank God for small favors, Lance thought. But
who knew when the woman would return. He eyed Dan darkly. "I want the
volume of this insanity turned down," he said. "And the people
restricted to inside the apartment. That includes those on the balcony."
Dan's face twisted with disapproval. The noise
level seemed to be part of his plan, a mating call to attract Bobo hither.
"I mean it, Dan," Lance warned.
"It's my rules or the party's over."
"All right, all right," Dan said,
shoving Lance away with annoyance. "Yo!" he shouted towards the
balcony, beginning his own cattle drive, bringing the herd inside before
closing and locking the door. He moved through the crowd to the stereo and
jerked the volume down.
"Hey!" the huge Dale roared.
"We're missing the best part. Turn it up. Turn it up!"
This last became a chant taken up by the
swaying forest of people, their faces twisting into something ugly now that
their illusion had been shattered. The volume of their voices drowned out the
music.
"Shut up!" Lance shouted,
drawing attention to himself. The chant stopped. Dan turned the volume on the
stereo down another notch. "This is my apartment. Either keep down the
noise or get out."
They moaned, some echoing the all-too-familiar
epithet of being brought down. Here we go again with him, they muttered.
Should have known he'd be a bummer.
But they quieted-- slowly reabsorbed into
their trip, beginning the slow sway to the tunes as Dale brought his arms up
telling them to stay calm.
"The door's still there, people,"
the large man said. "Just close your eyes. You'll feel it. Don't let this
bring you down."
But Dale's dark eyes seared across the room at
Lance. Hatred and rage spilling out of him as he mouth spouted slogans of love.
Lance turned away and hooked Dan's arm, dragging him to a free space near the
door.
"How long does this have to go on
for?" he asked.
Dan looked deflated and shrugged. "A
couple of hours, I guess."
Lance looked to the wall clock just visible in
the kitchen. Two hours meant midnight. He glanced around the room for Sarah and
found Marie instead, a stoned, pretty Marie seated in the corner half
undressed, some macho, imitation-hippie manhandling her.
"All right," Lance told Dan.
"But I want them out by one. You dig?" Dan dug it but didn't agree,
his face going sour as Lance turned away.
Lance tapped macho-man's shoulder.
"She's taken," He said, hooking a
thumb towards the door. The man wasn't stoned and glared up at Lance, hands
forming fists at his side.
"Don't," Lance warned. "Just
get."
"She's yours?" the man asked, sudden
comprehension coming into his opportunistic eyes.
"Yeah."
"Well why didn't she say so," the
man grumbled and rose, and after a quick study of the room, staggered out.
"What did you do that for?" Marie
asked, her voice cold and her eyes indicating a condition less stoned than
Lance had thought.
"I'm not sure Mike would have
approved," Lance said, pulling her to her feet. She staggered and giggled
as her bared breasts brushed against Lance's arm. He ignored her interest and
pulled up her bra. Only then did the frown appear as she realized who Lance
was.
"Where is Mikie," she asked in her
previously innocent voice, her gaze searching the room for sight of him.
"He didn't come back with me," Lance
said. Mike had mumbled about needing to think, wandering off towards the
Boulevard. "Just come on."
He took her hand; she resisted, showing a bit
of interest in another lurking male across the room. Lance pulled her towards
the beaded curtain and through it into the hall. Bodies had filled this space,
too, littering it with acts a degree or two more serious than those in the main
room. Dan's room was an outright orgy-- one body piled on top of another in a
confusion of limbs. The bathroom had a waiting line. The smell of burning dope
rising out of it like something from Dante's hell-- one man sat on the closed
toilet lid, pulling the rubber arm tie tight, while prodding at open sores with
a needle, looking for a useable vein.
Lance paused transfixed, wondering if he
should be the ultimate drag and put a stop to it. Where had the heroin come
from anyway? Had it been part of the Denver package? Did American drug
companies manufacture that, too? Or were these just needle freaks, shooting
anything they could melt down in a spoon, using sugar and water when there wasn't
any kind of pill.
He'd known junkies before, both here and back
east, but had never watched the process. It was worse than simply being
odd-man-out in a general high. He retched, his empty stomach sending searing
acid up into his throat.
"Come on," he grunted and yanked the
curious Marie from the door, barging into the master bedroom where and even
larger and more obscene orgy was underway, bodies sprawled on and odd the bed.
In the middle of it, back against the headboard, a naked and stoned Sarah
moaned, some strange man's face in her crotch.
Lance staggered back, tripping over his own
feet as he tried to retreat, tried to close his eyes. But it was the same scene
all over again. The parties. The drugs. And this! He should have screamed, but
his mouth didn't seem to work, except to utter a hoarse whisper to Marie.
"Come..."
"Where?" she asked, her own gaze
studying the pile of squirming flesh as if trying to find a place for herself.
"Just come," he said and dragged
back down the hall and through the beaded curtain. The music's volume had risen
again with the blond-headed Dale screaming at his followers to "Feel
it!"
Lance plunged through the dancers and snapped
off the music.
"Out!" he said to the stunned
faces.
"Hey, pal," Dan moaned, untangling
himself from the arms of a near-naked brunette. "You said one."
"I changed my mind," Lance snapped.
Big Dale and his followers looked enraged
enough to riot, but looked towards Dan as to blame him.
"What kind of stunt is this?" he
roared. "You call a party and then send in this fascist!"
"It's his place," Dan said sourly.
"But that's not partying!" Dale
said. "If we're here to party than let's party. No rules. No paranoia. No
bring downs."
Others beyond the influence of the big man
nodded from their love-making and private trips in the corners, glaring at
Lance across the room.
Uncool, man, their gazes said. You
don't belong here with us.
And he didn't. And didn't want to. Finally
with angry twist he put the music back on and barged through them towards the
door, dragging a limp Marie behind him.
Dan met him half way, his face a mixture of
rage and embarrassment. "Look, pal, I don't mean for it to come down like
this..."
"Fine!" Lance snapped. "You
just make sure it's over by one. You got me?"
"Sure, pal," Dan assured him.
"But where are you going now?"
"I don't know," Lance said, looking
at Marie, who stared back with the same stoned rage as the others, trying to
twist her hand out of his. "Maybe I can find Mike. I shouldn't have left
him with the mood he's in."
He glanced towards the beaded curtain and
stiffened.
"By one," he mumbled and pushed
Marie out, letting the door slam hard behind him.
***********
A click of keys or loose change gave the
figure away, stiffening Mike as he walked. He glanced back and saw someone
slipping in and out of islands of shadow on the park side of the street. The
half moon face illuminated briefly by a light over the triangle.
He stopped. Los Feliz rose in an arch up from
Hollywood Boulevard, skirting the rocky foundation of Griffiths Park. The
streets of Hollywood hills rising from it, up the layers of the mountain to the
stilted houses and glass walls of L.A.'s jet set. The glowing eyes of each
house confused him. He hadn't intended to come this way, but had wandered up
and around by accident, seeking the least used avenues in which to think-- his
mind a jigsaw of illogical images: Tucson, his kid, the dope, the bust. Each
event clicking off one after another. Inevitable. Irreversible. Like some sort
of extended suicide.
Demetre bothered him most of all, a loose
screw in a delicate machine, capable of wrecking everything. Mike didn't
completely trust the man or his instincts as a cop. What would stop him from
finishing what he'd started?
Perhaps Mike had intended to hide in the park,
changing his mind when he thought of the muggers, perverts and bikers for which
he could be mistaken. The cops patrolled the place regularly.
His fingers brushed the hard handle of the
pistol in his belt. He studied his pursuer. The figure had stopped, too-- just
beyond the last string of lights on the upper curve. The shape of a flat-topped
Spanish-styled hat showed against those lights, like the ghost of Zorro who had
pranced these hills centuries earlier.
Sloppy, he thought. Mike could have
killed the figure with such a backdrop of lights. And yet the figure struck him
as professional in every other way, the movement as familiar to him as a
twin's, almost indian in style. But the impatience ruined everything. The
anxiety obvious even from a distance.
Demetre?
No, too small and agile for his ilk.
But the sense of the hunt vibrated here. But
which hunter? Dan's Bobo? Or maybe Buckingham himself?
Did Buckingham know already of Mike's search?
Mike had meant to stop at the Free Press office on his way back from
Demetre, but had forgotten.
He moved, this time quickly, his boots
clacking like horseshoes on the sidewalk. He stepped into the street, then
across it. No sense in trying to be cute. Vermont Avenue brought bright lights,
crossing Los Feliz then winding up into the hills. He turned up, ignoring the
broader street and its string of closed stores.
Plenty of places to hide down there, he
thought. But he no longer wanted shelter.
The climb hurt his stiff legs. Too many days
on the road. His muscles used to driving not climbing. Around him, a miniature
wilderness, low trees and shrubs marking the boundaries of rich people's
houses. Fancy cars snuggled into angled driveways like hibernating creatures.
Some rose sharply from the road. Others descended. The lights from each house
filtered through the leaves with snatches of music and laughter.
And below and beyond the houses, L.A.
stretched out like a sea of glittering stars. The beauty of it awed Mike, but deeper
inside, it reminded him of just how far humanity had spread its over-populated
disease.
Behind him, his pursuer followed, whispering
step lost in the party noises around him. Mike climbed more vigorously,
twisting with the road till it came back upon itself only higher up in the
mountain. Down through the trees and the breaks of houses, he could see patches
of road upon which he'd just come. He could see the ghost following in its leap
from shadow to shadow.
Yes, yes, keep coming, Mike thought. A
little higher up and he would have the fool.
After another compete twist in the road, he
saw the others. A clumsily moving mass of human flesh rising up along the
lowest loop behind Mike's ghosts. A full dozen moving figures who cared nothing
about noise, laughing and cursing, smashing bottles on the roadway.
Bikers!
Or pseudo-bikers. Mike couldn't tell from
here. Plenty of both came and went from the park. They seemed like a pack of
wolves following a trail. Mike's ghost noticed them, too, stopping abruptly to
stare back-- so alarmed as to have paused in a pool of light, verifying Mike's
earlier impression of Zorro.
The ghost seemed to draw a weapon.
Mike ran-- a deliberately loud run with boots
thudding the pavement and gravel. The sound carried back down the hill in
echoes. The head of the ghost jerked up and froze, seemingly unable to make up
its mind as to what action to take. Then, after a moment, it resumed chasing
Mike.
Farther down the loop chain, the bikers
howled, picking up their own pace for a more boisterous pursuit.
"Come back!" they shouted.
"We're not going to hurt you."
Mike's ghost picked up speed, abandoning its
previous care, running full tilt up hill.
Mike reached the crest of the hill and an
entrance to the park. It startled him. He'd forgotten how large a park
Griffiths was or that there were other ways into its tangle besides the long
green strip of land down near Los Feliz and Western. Two low concrete and stone
columns abutted the road with a veil of trees echoing them beyond, forming a
dark wall of darkness.
Images of the park came back to him. A greek
theater. A bird sanctuary. A municipal nursery. The park even had its own
planetarium. But all did not sit close up on each other like things did in
Disneyland. From lower down, nearer Hollywood, he could have seen bits of them
over the lips of the trees, a bald head of a mountain rising up out of it, its
forehead marked with the famous white letters of Hollywood.
But he'd never come up into the park this way
and felt disoriented. The trees seemed to close him in.
The bikers shouted. The footsteps of the ghost
sounded louder, closer, drawing up in him the increased beat of his own heart.
The old excitement coming again. Like it did driving the trucks of dope over
the Mexican border. Like when he'd set the fuse to bomb a bank.
Beyond the entrance, the road curved with
soft, angled embankments rising to either side, thick enough with tree trunks
and underground to provide cover. He rushed up one side and into the shadows
where he stopped and crouched, his pistol out.
The ghost appeared an instant later, stopping
just as Mike had.
"Over here," Mike hissed, pushing
his hand out to wave the figure forward. The ghost did not hesitate, leaping up
the embankment as Mike had done. But the minute it reached cover, Mike grabbed
it, pushing his pistol under the brim of the hat.
"And why exactly were you....?" He
sputtered to a stop. Chris' broad face grinned up at him.
"Hello, Michael," she said softly.
"Fancy meeting you here."
The urge to pull the trigger surged in him.
Like a thoughtless impulse over which he had no control. But the pistol lowered
as he stared at his ex-wife and her disguise.
"Why you following me?" he asked
sharply.
"I wanted to see where you were
going," Chris said and freed herself from his now-limp arms. "I saw
you wondering around Hollywood. You looked lost. I was afraid you'd get
yourself in trouble."
Mike's teeth ground together. It was her usual
logic, twisting things every so subtly.
"I would have been fine if you hadn't led
that pack of wolves up here," Mike growled.
A flicker of shame showed briefly in Chris'
eyes as she glanced back down towards the road. The grumble and laughter echoed
off the mountain side as the bikers advanced.
"They must have been lying in wait down
on Los Feliz," Chris said. "But I've got a gun, Michael."
"Which is likely to attract a police
patrol if you use it," Mike said.
"So? Do we run?"
"Not unless we want them tracking us all
night. I've got a better idea."
He led her out of the trees and back down to
the roadway, pausing at the edge where the shadow of trees formed a deeper pool
of darkness.
"Take out your pistol," he said.
Chris complied. The first of the gang appeared
around the curve. Shaggy figures stopping short as Chris and Mike stepped out
into the light with pistols raised.
"Just hold it right there," Mike
said in a tone of voice he himself had heard a thousand times. He needed no
badge for them to stop. "And what exactly are you people up to?"
"You the fuzz?" one of them asked.
"What do you think?"
"Well, we didn't mean nothing,"
another said. "We were just going up into the park."
"The park's closed after dark. Why don't
you go home?"
"Why don't you drop dead," a new
voice said, coming up behind the band of shaggy wolves, a shotgun in his hand.
"What's the matter, Mister Day? You don't remember me?"
Mike's stomach tightened. "Billy?"
"Good guess," Billy Night Rider
said, shoving people out of his way, his blond hair shimmering silver in the
dim light. "I heard you were in town. But what are you doing impersonating
a cop?"
"What are your hounds doing hunting
me?"
"Nobody was hunting you, Day. We were
hunting..." Bill leaned closer and squinted at Chris, then laughed.
"Well, I'll be! That's your Ex, isn't it? When did you two get back
together."
"We haven't. We just happen to be
here."
"Like Frank and Jesse happen to be
brothers. Bullshit. What are you up to?"
The hard eyes peered up at Mike from the soft
incline, the hunger and suspicion exactly the way Mike remembered it, waiting
with jealous anticipation for his own change in the Big Time-- too mean for the
Hell's Angels. Too sane for the asylum.
"Nothing, damn it! Just leave us
alone!"
Billy's mean face grew meaner. "Maybe
somebody hired you, eh?" he asked, shifting his feet; his gang shifting,
too.
"Hired me? For what?"
"To help clear us out of town."
"What for?"
"To make it easy to take over."
Mike laughed. "Now who's full of shit,
Billy. I don't even like this town, let alone wanting exclusive rights to
it."
"Maybe you don't. But the man who hired
you might."
Mike squinted, trying to study the subtler
features of the man's bloated face. What was he saying? Who was he talking
about?
"And just exactly who do you think hired
me?"
"Do I have to name him?"
"You do if you don't want a bullet in
your head," Mike growled.
The big man's hands fiddled with the shotgun
while staring straight up at Mike-- the debate obvious in his eyes, timing out
his own reflexes, then with a sag, he seemed to decide not to risk it.
"Bobo," he muttered.
An immense wave of relief washed through Mike
and he laughed, the echo of it carrying into the hills on either side of the
road. He wanted to hug the man for being so simple.
"I'm not associated with Bobo in the
least," Mike assured him. "Dan's looking to scalp the man, too. Go
talk to him."
"So that's what they were after,"
Billy mumbled.
"Then you saw them already?"
"They were around asking questions. But
so have others."
"Others?" Mike said with a note of
alarm. "Like who?"
Billy's broad face brightened as his eyes
became devious again. "Wouldn't you
like to know."
"Out with it, Billy," Mike said.
"I'm in no mood for games."
"People," Billy said. "I don't
know who all they were. Some in suits that might have been cops. Others who
looked like freaks who might have been cops, too."
"And what kind of questions were they
asking?"
This time, Billy's face went dark as he shook
his head from side to side. "Bad things, man. Talk about some character
named Buckingham."
The chill rose and fell inside Mike, but he
kept his face unaffected. "And what did you tell them?"
"What could I tell them when I didn't know
anything."
"You've never met Buckingham?"
"Hell no," Billy said, spitting
again. "And I don't intend to. From what I've heard he's nothing but bad
news. Killed some of my Frisco connections. Rumor has it he's on the warpath,
killing everyone who gets in his way."
"Warpath? You mean he's an indian?"
Mike said, truly startled for the first time.
"That's what I've heard," Billy
said.
Stark images raced through Mike's head,
flashing of faces he'd seen, indian activists he had known along the road, from
the crowd currently occupying Alcatraz to the throng that had waylaid them on
the road. But none seemed to fit the frame he had built for Buckingham in his
mind.
Something snapped. A branch maybe or a loose
piece of gravel farther up the road. His attention focused upon the low sound
and a different chill touched him.
They'd been careless, letting their voices
rise in a dangerous place. He glanced at Billy and the other man had noted the
sound, too, stiffening, his finger curling around the shotgun trigger.
Now, Mike heard the movement of feet and the
under-lying hum of several automobiles. The raspy whispered voice of a police
radio sounded somewhere in the mixture, confirming his suspicions.
Mike grabbed Chris' arm and leaped up the
embankment towards the trees. Billy motioned stiffly for his boys to move. But
the searing search light from up the road caught him full in its circle.
"Don't move," the voice behind the
light said.
The biker's shotgun boomed.
Out went the light.
"Get!" he screamed as more
lights rose and gunfire from the bikers took these out as well.
Mike sagged against a tree trunk, breathless,
the panorama of fighting before him like a illusion. He made out two police
cars, one up the road, the other down behind the gang. He could only guess the
number of cops, there weren't many. At least one had gone down with Billy's
initial blast. The other bikers had silenced those below, leaving only the
intermittent flashes of gunfire from under upside car.
"Let's hope he doesn't get to a
radio," Mike muttered.
"No problem," Chris said, crouching
near him, her pistol balanced in the crook of her arm. She fired once. The
cop's answering flashes ceased.
Mike yelped and snatched the pistol out of her
hands. "Why the fuck did you do that?"
Chris looked hurt. "I thought that's what
you wanted, Michael."
"To kill a cop? No way! Leave that to
Billy's crowd. I'm not stupid. Those sons of bitches stick together. God!
They fry people in this state for less. Come on. Let's get the hell out of here
before all hell breaks loose."
He grabbed her hand and dragged her higher
into the hills, beyond the shield of trees into the rugged soil beyond, weeds
and dull grass and jutting teeth of stone. They could have been on the surface
of the moon.
Mike stopped.
"What's the matter now?" Chris
asked, still annoyed at his scolding, refusing to understand the fury with
which cops reacted.
"We're going the wrong way."
The great white letters spelling out Hollywood
loomed above them like some new generation stonehenge.
"There's nothing up this way but
rock," he said. "We've got to get back down into the city and get
ourselves lost." There would be helicopters and dogs, and hundreds of
enraged uniformed men, beating the bush. "We have to go down."
"Fine," Chris said. "Lead
on."
Already sirens wailed the distance. Mike
angled southwest, back into the trees. The land formed a V before them, Vermont
Canyon yawned with the road winding along its rim. The red splash of
approaching police lights light up the road from Los Feliz like a false dawn.
City and county cops most likely, answering the call of fallen comrades.
Mike felt sick to his stomach.
"We have to cross the road," he
said, squinting to see the curved top of the planetarium on the west ridge.
"Otherwise they'll cut us off."
"Then get on with it," Chris
growled, her dark face shimmering red with the sweat and lights, her eyes hard
the way they had been years earlier in Tucson.
Even here, the ground had become a scraggly
moonscape, opening up into sudden holes or drops as they descended. By the time
they reached the road, Mike's legs and ankles bled. He spat out the dust, but
it infected his lungs and eyes. He glanced to the left and saw evidence of the
battle scene farther down the road, now blistered with slashes of light and
whispering radios.
"I say we skip the climb and stick to the
road," Chris said, staring up the other side of the gully. "It comes
around the planetarium, too-- and we won't kill ourselves getting there."
"But we might wind up in a jail
cell," Mike mumbled, though felt no more like climbing than Chris did.
"All right. But let's be quick about it. God only knows what we're going
to do once we get there."
"We'll climb down into valley, of
course," Chris said, taking him by the arm in a burst of energy.