Except for tonight, which only looked more like work. He got on the
telephone and tried to call Penny, but she was out, probably Watusi-ing the night away opposite some shorthaired attorney with a promising career. Cool with Doc. Next he rang up his Aunt Reet, who lived down the boulevard on the other side of the dunes in a more suburban part of town with houses, yards, and trees, because of which it had become
known as the Tree Section. A few years ago, after divorcing a lapsed Mis
souri Synod Lutheran with a T-Bird agency and a fatality for the restless homemakers one meets at bars in bowling alleys, Reet had moved down here from the San Joaquin with the kids and started selling real estate, and before long she had her own agency, which she now ran out of a bungalow on the same oversize lot as her house. Whenever Doc needed to know anything touching on the world of property, Aunt Reet, with her phenomenal lot-by-lot grasp of land use from the desert to the sea, as they liked to say on the evening news, was the one he went to.
“
Someday,
”
she prophesied,
“
there will be computers for this, all you
’
ll have to do
’
s type in what you
’
re looking f
or, or even better just talk it
in—like that HAL in
2001: A Space Odyssey?
—and it
’
ll be right back at you with more information than you
’
d ever want to know, any lot in the L.A. Basin, all the way back to the Spanish land grants—water rights, encumbrances, mortgage histories, whatever you want, trust me,
it
’
s coming.
”
Till then, in the real non-sci-fi world, there was Aunt Reet
’
s
bordering-on-the-supernatural sense of the land, the stories that seldom appeared in deeds or contracts, especially matrimonial, the generations
of family hatreds big and small, the way the water flowed, or used to.
She picked up on the sixth ring. The TV set was loud in the background.
“
Make it quick, Doc, I
’
ve got a live one tonight and a quarter ton of makeup to put on yet.
”
“
What can you tell me about Mickey Wolfmann?
”
If she took even a second to breathe, Doc didn
’
t notice.
“
Westside Hochdeutsch mafia, biggest of the big, construction, savings and loans,
untaxed billions stashed under an Alp someplace, technically Jewish but
wants to be a Nazi, becomes exercised often to the point of violence at those who forget to spell his name with two
n
’s
.
What
’
s he to you?
”
Doc gave her a rundown on Shasta
’
s visit and her account of the plot against the Wolfmann fortune.
“
In the real-estate business,
”
Reet remarked,
“
God knows, few of us are strangers to moral ambiguity. But some of these developers, they make Godzilla look like a conservationist, and you might not care to get into this, Larry. Who
’
s paying you?
”
“
Well.
..
”
“
All on spec, eh? big surprise. Listen, if Shasta can
’
t pay you, maybe that means Mickey
’
s dumped her, and she
’
s blaming the wife and wants revenge.
”
“
Possible. But say I just wanted to hang out and rap with this Wolfmann dude?
”
Was that an exasperated sigh?
“
I wouldn
’
t recommend your usual
approach. He goes around with a dozen bikers, mostly Aryan Brotherhood
alumni, to watch his back, all court-certified badasses. Try making an appointment for once.
”
“
Wait a minute, I ditched social-studies class a lot, but... Jews and the AB
...
Isn
’
t there
...
something about, I forget.
..
hatred?
”
“
The book on Mickey is, is he
’
s unpredictable. More and more lately.
Some would say eccentric. I would say stoned out of his fuckin mind, nothing personal.
”
“
And this goon squad, they
’
re loyal to him, even if when they were in the place they took some oath with maybe a anti-Semitic clause in it here
and there?
”
“
Drive within ten blocks of the man, they
’
ll lie down in front of your car. Keep coming, they
’
ll roll a grenade. You want to talk to Mickey, don
’
t be spontaneous, don
’
t even be cute. Go through channels.
”
“
Yeah, but I also don
’
t want to get Shasta in trouble. Where do you think I could run into him, like, accidentally?
”
“
I promised my kid sister I
’
d never put her baby in the way of danger.
”
“
I
’
m cool with the Brotherhood, Aunt Reet, know the handshake and
everything.
”
“
All right, it
’
s your ass, kid, I have major liquid-liner issues to deal with here, but I
’
m told Mickey
’
s been spending time out at his latest assault on the environment—some chipboard horror known as Channel View Estates?
”
“
Oh yeah, that. Bigfoot Bjornsen does commercials for them. Interrupting strange movies you
’
ve never heard of.
”
“
Well, maybe your old cop buddy
’
s the one who should be taking care of this. Have you been in touch with the LAPD?
”
“
I did think of going to Bigfoot,
”
Doc said,
“
but just as I was reaching for the phone I remembered how, being Bigfoot and all, he
’
d probably try to pop
me
for the whole thing.
”
“
Maybe you
’
re better off with the Nazis, I don
’
t envy you the choice.
Be careful, Larry. Check in now and then just so I can reassure Elmina that you
’
re still alive.
”
Fucking Bigfoot. Well, wouldn
’
t you know. On some extrasensory
impulse, Doc reached for the tube, switched it on and flipped to one of the off-network channels dedicated to long-ago TV movies and unsold pilots, and sure enough, there was the old hippie-hating mad dog him
self, moonlighting after a busy day of civil-rights violation, as pitchman
for Channel View Estates.
“
A Michael Wolfmann Concept,
”
it read
underneath the logo.
Like many L.A. cops, Bigfoot, named for his entry method of choice,
harbored show-business yearnings and in fact had already appeared in
enough character parts, from comical Mexicans on
The Flying Nun
to
assistant psychopaths on
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,
to be paying SAG
dues and receiving residual checks. Maybe the producers of these Chan
nel View spots were desperate enough to be counting on some audience
recognition—maybe, as Doc suspected, Bigfoot was somehow duked
into whatever the underlying real-estate deal was. Whatever, personal dignity didn
’
t come into it much. Bigfoot showed up on camera wearing getups that would have embarrassed the most unironical hippie in Cali
fornia, tonight
’
s being an ankle-length velvet cape in a paisley print of so many jangling
“
psychedelic
”
hues that Doc
’
s tube, a low-end affair purchased in Zody
’
s parking lot at a Moonlight Madness sale a couple years
ago, couldn
’
t really keep up. Bigfoot had accessorized his outfit with love
beads, shades with peace symbols on the lenses, and a gigantic Afro wig
striped in Chinese red, chartreuse, and indigo. Bigfoot often reminded viewers of legendary used-car figure Cal Worthington—except where
Cal was famous for including live animals in his pitch, Bigfoot
’
s scripts
featured a relentless terror squad of small children, who climbed all over
the model-home furniture, performed insubordinate cannonballs into
the backyard pools, whooped and hollered and pretended to shoot Big
foot down, screaming
“
Freak Power!
”
and
“
Death to the Pig!
”
View
ers were ecstatic.
“
Those li
’
l kids,
”
they would cry,
“
wow, they
’
re really
something, huh!
”
No overfed leopard ever got up Cal Worthington
’
s
nose the way these kids did Bigfoot
’
s, but he was a pro, wasn
’
t he, and
by God he would soldier through, closely studying old W. C. Fields and
Bette Davis movies whenever they came on to see what tips he could pick up for sharing the frame with kids whose cuteness, for him, was never better than problematical.
“
We
’
ll be chums,
”
he would croak as if to himself, pretending to puff compulsively on a cigarette,
“
we
’
ll be
chums
”
There was now sudden hammering on the front door, and briefly Doc flashed that it had to be Bigfoot in person, about to kick his way in
once again as in days of old. But instead it was Denis from down the hill,
whose name everybody pronounced to rhyme with
“
penis,
”
appearing even more disoriented than usual.
“
So Doc, I
’
m up on Dunecrest, you know the drugstore there, and like I noticed their sign,
‘
Drug
’
?
‘
Store
’
? Okay? Walked past it a thousand times, never
really saw
it—Drug, Store! man, far out, so I went in and Smilin Steve was at the counter and I said, like,
‘
Yes, hi, I
’
d like
some drugs, please?
’
—oh, here, finish this up if you want.
”
“
Thanks, all
’
s
‘
at
’
ll do
‘
s just burn my lip.
”
Denis by now had drifted into the kitchen and started looking through the fridge.
“
You
’
re hungry, Denis?
”
“
Really. Hey, like Godzilla always sez to Mothra—why don
’
t we go eat some place?
”
They walked up to Dunecrest and turned left into the honky-tonk
part of town. Pipeline Pizza was jumping, the smoke so thick inside you
couldn
’
t see from one end of the bar to the other. The jukebox, audible all the way to El Porto and beyond, was playing
“
Sugar, Sugar
”
by the
Archies. Denis threaded his way back to the kitchen to see about a pizza,
and Doc watched Ensenada Slim working one of the Gottlieb machines in the corner. Slim owned and operated a head shop just up the street called the Screaming Ultraviolet Brain and was a sort of village elder around here. After he
’
d won a dozen free games, he took a break, saw Doc and nodded.