31 – Back in Hollywood

 

 

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 too 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 panhandlers, 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 revealed 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 it 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 queasy, 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, their arrival seemed anti-climactic. 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."

 The ground floor sheltered them in a tangle of descending stairs and shadows of apartment balconies. Dan slid into the 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 nearby. 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 an abandoned home striking him with each step, wind-swept dust streaked across the concrete and metal.

 "Look," Dan hissed, grabbing Lance's arm. The imprint of a shoe 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 a 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 alone 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 his 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."

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