courtesy,” I said.
Cronin thought about it.
“You know he’s got this gig tomorrow night. A big boost to his career.”
“I heard.”
“Right now Bucky could be doing half a dozen things. Rehearsal. Picking out some new threads at Jerry Lee’s.” Cronin smiled slightly. “I asked him one time why he wore his jeans so tight. He said, ‘Man, it ain’t rock and roll if your jeans don’t hurt.’“
“He’s not back on Molochs, is he?” Molochs was another name for crystal meth.
Cronin looked amazed and indignant.
“Hey, that was just a kid thing! Lasted a couple of weeks, then his padrone caught on and had Bucky in rehab fast-fast.” Cronin snapped his fingers twice to demonstrate just how on top of things Miles Brenta had been. “Nowadays Bucky’s clean as angels. He has a serious nature. A student of TM. So like I’m saying, if he’s temporarily out of touch it’s because, hell, he’s an artist. Needs some alone time to prepare for his gig. They’re looking for upward of forty thousand over there in Pasadena.”
“Doesn’t solve my problem. I’ll just keep on hoping I bump into Bucky before then.”
Cronin looked over my bargaining chip and decided to call.
“Okay. Just lay off a little while and I’ll introduce you to our boy tomorrow night at the fund-raiser. Once his gig is over, have a couple of beers with him. Ask him whatever’s on your mind. But I sit in, Rawson.”
“Looking forward to it,” I said.
Then he took his time checking Beatrice out. Bea offered him a cool nod for his appreciation. The three of us left Doghouse Reilly’s. After promising to be in touch about my “interview” with Bucky Spartacus, Cronin dodged a westbound Pacific Electric trolley and grabbed a pedicab for the short trip to his firm’s offices on Wilshire.
Bea and I waited for the parking valet to bring my Land Rover. A street sweeper swished by. The Privilege was an immaculate place. No hoochers, curb roaches, bloodstains left by wingless angels. No dirt, bad air, birdcrap, butts, paper cups, gobs of coochputty, cracks in the sidewalks, weeds in the concrete planters. Pedicabs chirped like crickets so you wouldn’t absentmindedly walk in front of one. MagLevs hummed along. A million solar-gain windows reflected clouds. A block from us a nearly forty-foot 3-D mural of Bogart, Bergman, and Paul Henreid in the penultimate parting scene from
Casablanca
dominated our shut-in view. Other murals of long-departed stars and their fabulous films were all over town, blown up to cloud-size, relieving the stark ugliness of miles of thick concrete wall. Tourists loved them; but then all of the Privilege must have seemed like heaven for the fantasy challenged of a traumatized society.
Bea said, “I started to get this odd feeling while the two of you were talking.”
“What about?”
“Remember you told me how you bumped into Chickie at de Sade’s before you came upstairs to see the boss?”
“Yes.”
“And you scanned her.”
“After she reacted badly to my being a Wolfer.”
“So her Snitch was functioning okay?”
“She had one of the new models WEIR has just started using. A LUMO.”
“What—”
“For Lunar Module. All updated microcircuitry. Chickie’s LUMO was in perfect working order.”
“Well—when her brain signaled a changeover in the ladies’ lounge, shouldn’t her supply of TQ have kicked in immediately and suppressed it? Put her to sleep right there on the pottie?”
“Unless at some point during the thirty-five or forty minutes between the time I saw her last and the Hairball appeared, Chickie’s LUMO malfunctioned. No matter how rigorously they’re tested, new gadgets sometimes get fritzy. There’s another possibility. Someone, and I wouldn’t rule out Spartacus, popped the Snitcher out of his gal-pal with the point of a knife, then triggered the mechanism that caused Chickie to go OOPs. Then by some means she was directed to climb to the roof, jump through
Cronin thought about it.
“You know he’s got this gig tomorrow night. A big boost to his career.”
“I heard.”
“Right now Bucky could be doing half a dozen things. Rehearsal. Picking out some new threads at Jerry Lee’s.” Cronin smiled slightly. “I asked him one time why he wore his jeans so tight. He said, ‘Man, it ain’t rock and roll if your jeans don’t hurt.’“
“He’s not back on Molochs, is he?” Molochs was another name for crystal meth.
Cronin looked amazed and indignant.
“Hey, that was just a kid thing! Lasted a couple of weeks, then his padrone caught on and had Bucky in rehab fast-fast.” Cronin snapped his fingers twice to demonstrate just how on top of things Miles Brenta had been. “Nowadays Bucky’s clean as angels. He has a serious nature. A student of TM. So like I’m saying, if he’s temporarily out of touch it’s because, hell, he’s an artist. Needs some alone time to prepare for his gig. They’re looking for upward of forty thousand over there in Pasadena.”
“Doesn’t solve my problem. I’ll just keep on hoping I bump into Bucky before then.”
Cronin looked over my bargaining chip and decided to call.
“Okay. Just lay off a little while and I’ll introduce you to our boy tomorrow night at the fund-raiser. Once his gig is over, have a couple of beers with him. Ask him whatever’s on your mind. But I sit in, Rawson.”
“Looking forward to it,” I said.
Then he took his time checking Beatrice out. Bea offered him a cool nod for his appreciation. The three of us left Doghouse Reilly’s. After promising to be in touch about my “interview” with Bucky Spartacus, Cronin dodged a westbound Pacific Electric trolley and grabbed a pedicab for the short trip to his firm’s offices on Wilshire.
Bea and I waited for the parking valet to bring my Land Rover. A street sweeper swished by. The Privilege was an immaculate place. No hoochers, curb roaches, bloodstains left by wingless angels. No dirt, bad air, birdcrap, butts, paper cups, gobs of coochputty, cracks in the sidewalks, weeds in the concrete planters. Pedicabs chirped like crickets so you wouldn’t absentmindedly walk in front of one. MagLevs hummed along. A million solar-gain windows reflected clouds. A block from us a nearly forty-foot 3-D mural of Bogart, Bergman, and Paul Henreid in the penultimate parting scene from
Casablanca
dominated our shut-in view. Other murals of long-departed stars and their fabulous films were all over town, blown up to cloud-size, relieving the stark ugliness of miles of thick concrete wall. Tourists loved them; but then all of the Privilege must have seemed like heaven for the fantasy challenged of a traumatized society.
Bea said, “I started to get this odd feeling while the two of you were talking.”
“What about?”
“Remember you told me how you bumped into Chickie at de Sade’s before you came upstairs to see the boss?”
“Yes.”
“And you scanned her.”
“After she reacted badly to my being a Wolfer.”
“So her Snitch was functioning okay?”
“She had one of the new models WEIR has just started using. A LUMO.”
“What—”
“For Lunar Module. All updated microcircuitry. Chickie’s LUMO was in perfect working order.”
“Well—when her brain signaled a changeover in the ladies’ lounge, shouldn’t her supply of TQ have kicked in immediately and suppressed it? Put her to sleep right there on the pottie?”
“Unless at some point during the thirty-five or forty minutes between the time I saw her last and the Hairball appeared, Chickie’s LUMO malfunctioned. No matter how rigorously they’re tested, new gadgets sometimes get fritzy. There’s another possibility. Someone, and I wouldn’t rule out Spartacus, popped the Snitcher out of his gal-pal with the point of a knife, then triggered the mechanism that caused Chickie to go OOPs. Then by some means she was directed to climb to the roof, jump through
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