32 – On Bobo’s scent
"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.
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 lifestyle,
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 bad. 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 feared 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 mics, 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.
"Hinchcliffe, 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," Hinchcliffe
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 for 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," Hinchcliffe
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!" Hinchcliffe
moaned, mistaking Dan's reaction.
"I know," Dan said and charged back
out onto the street, as if following a scent.
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