And on top:
BLACK PUSSY CAFE.
A black interior except for the backlit bar, a hanging pool table lamp, and a low, raised platform bathed by spotlights gelled dirty Pink. On this small stage a stringy woman, naked except for spike heels, sleepwalked through a routine as formal as kabuki. The rock fad of the week thundered from huge studio monitors hung above on chains, but her pinched, up-hollow face stayed as blank as if she’d finally been deafened by her work.
The bartender was half invisible in the murk. “Yeah?”
“Draft.”
The rock tune quit without concluding, as they seem to do, and the girl stood patient as a cow until a few customers had begrudged her three claps each. Then moving quickly for a change, she strode forward, swooped at the dollars wrapped by ringside critics on the low stage railing, and disappeared through drapes in back. The silence was like a drink of ice water.
The stage lights brightened enough to let me see the bartender. “Is Bull Dike around? Pits Caudle sent me.”
He glanced over at the pool table. “Tats!” When the two players looked up, he jerked his head and they walked over, cues in hand. “He’s looking for Bull.”
“Tats” was obviously the vulture-nosed party in Iron Boy overalls, his shirtless back and arms dressed entirely in tattoos: swastikas, naked girls, Chinese dragons, and a motorcycle splitting a skull with the legend, Death Is Certain, Life is Not.
His large hairy buddy affected a black beret covered with pins and medals, and drugstore cowboy chaps with HARLEY-DAVIDSON tooled into the leather. An immense bulge of fat stretched his T-shirt into the approved biker beer gut that renders its macho owner weirdly pregnant.
Tats stared at me, then looked at his porcine pal. “We know’m, Pancho?” He pronounced it Spanish-style, and “Pauncho” was indeed the perfect handle. The fat man shook his head.
Tats stared at me again. “Who are you?”
I repeated what I’d told the bartender, who by now was at the end of the bar, caressing a gooseneck P. A. mike: “And now, bros, how ‘bout a real warm welcome for our own country queen, righteous Princess Daisy!”
Pancho grinned, showing a mouth like an elephant graveyard. “Daisy! Bodacious!” He turned to watch the stage.
Tats made a victory sign at the bartender, who responded with two beers. He looked over his bottle neck, reviewing my skinny six-foot-two from bourgeois haircut to golf shirt to jeans to cheapo sneakers. A sneer. “Pits don’t work with assholes.”
I suppressed the obvious rebuttal.
The speakers rattled record stylus static and then a Nashville tune blared out, the shocking pink spotlights dimmed, and a little woman in a vast blonde wig parted the curtains. She swiveled forward in denim shorts, snapping fingers to the beat and bouncing breasts in an under-qualified bandanna halter.
I tried again: “Where can I find Bull Dike?”
“You can’t.”
Keeping my voice pleasant: “He does come in here, doesn’t he?”
“Maybe, but you don’t get it: you don’t come in here.”
The dancer locked and unlocked one pink knee to the music while the customers gaped at this strange cartoon of femininity: petite arms and legs attached to an almost portly trunk with oversize equipment bulging everywhere. She looked like a tribal fetish.
Tats shifted the pool cue from hand to hand like a hood in a Warner B-movie. “‘S here’s our place. No cagers, no assholes, no pretty boys in tennis shoes.”
Pancho whooped “Go Daisy!” and the dancer grinned and raised a cowboy hat just big enough to fit her nine-gallon wig. She dropped her eyes to the customer below her.
Tats rapped my scrimshaw belt buckle with the end of the cue. “Most of all, no fags.” To Pancho: “Tell’m what we do to fags.”
“Huh? Oh yeah, fags. We stick pool cues up their ass.” Pancho turned back toward Daisy.
I picked up my beer and started toward a stage-side table.
“Don’t go ‘way, faggot.”
“Mind if I watch?” I made it to the table and took the leftmost of three chairs. Tats and Pancho followed.
Daisy popped her waistband snap and peeled the denim in slow motion, unveiling the unexpected bonus of a tattooed daisy, bent forward, halfway up its stalk, by her sudden curve of stomach.
Tats sat on the right-hand chair and Pancho collapsed in the third seat, behind the table. Now visible in the spill from the pink stage spots, he waved to Daisy. She grinned and started toward us, leaving the shorts behind her on the stage.
Tats leaned across the table. “Let’s go play faggot pool.”
I half rose, but Tats grabbed my right wrist and dragged me down. His fist was like a handcuff.
Squatting in front of Tats, Daisy began to tease him.
He ignored her. “Pancho, we need a place to play faggot pool. Go see if the garage is empty.”
“When it’s over.” Pancho’s gaze never left the dancer.
Daisy pouted at Tats. “S’matter, baby, got a headache?”
Tats only had eyes for me.
Daisy rose and stood before Pancho. Pursing red lips at him, she undid the bandanna halter and let her breasts swing free.
Pancho beamed at her with pleasure. “I don’t got no headache.”
She looked at him and grinned. Kneeling in front of our table, she lifted her breasts. Absurdly radiant, Pancho bumbled to his feet, leaned across the tiny table, and pushed his hairy face toward her cleavage. The other customers laughed and whistled, and Tats was forced to release my arm.
I stood up as casually as possible.
Tats yelled, “Pancho, sit the fuck down!”
Too late: I grabbed Pancho’s upright pool cue with my left hand while shoving downward with my right. Unbalanced by the stretch across the table, he crashed forward like a stricken bison. Daisy squeaked with surprise.
I caught her hand and yanked her forward and Daisy tumbled harmlessly off the stage onto the mattress of Pancho’s fat back.
As Tats jumped up, I swung the pool cue in a wobbly left-handed sweep still good enough to catch him on the cheek and nose. He stumbled backward roaring, tangled in his chair, went down.
Looking around: thick bartender heading to block the door. No good. Restrooms? Little windows, maybe barred. Customers immobile. Daisy sitting up, struggling to right her top-heavy wig. Tats thrashing to his feet, streaming blood and beer.
Up on the stage, stumbling on the railing; through the curtains; glancing around: no obvious exit. Dimmer on the wall beneath a sign: SPOTS. Spinning the dimmer knob; yells from out front as the stage lights died. Through the only door: grubby little kitchen; fat cook reading his paper on a tilted chair; comic surprise as I racketed through his pans.
Double doors with crash bars. These Doors to Remain Unlocked During Business Hours. Praying for law-abiding management. Hitting the right door. Latched, and the impact almost winded me; but the left door swung me out into the blinding afternoon.
Pelting up the alley past the open motorcycle garage and out onto the hot street. Fumbling for car keys, I pounded toward the patient Beetle thirty yards away, as the bartender, Pancho, and Tats exploded through the front curtains of the bar.
Key in the lock, door open, into the driver’s seat checking the right door lock, starting the engine.
The posse reached the Beetle as the engine coughed and caught. Tats grabbed at the door handle. The ‘63 VW lacks a left inside lock, so Tats yanked the door wide open. Into first, gun it, pop the clutch. Tats’s steel fist grabbed my shirt. As I gathered speed, he hopped on the running board. Bad move: Beetle running boards are tin and mine was rotted by more than twenty years’ exposure. It fell off the car and so did Tats, clutching half my polo shirt. Seven ninety-five shot to hell.
I watched him in the mirror as he bounced along the street, tumbled to a stop, rolled over, and sat up. The bartender was running to help him and Pancho was stomping the starter of a parked Harley. That didn’t look good.
/> Left turn; two blocks west; left again; then south along a wide and empty boulevard, looking for a place to get lost.
There it was: a shopping center anchored by a K-Mart. I swung into the lot, cruised until I found a section thick with cars, and parked the VW beside a baroque van big enough to mask the Beetle’s high roofline from the street.
Oboy. I sat there in the fading yellow light shaking and sweating, picking at the remnants of my ruined shirt.
Now what? The shirt could be replaced and K-Mart was just my price range but what about President Dike?
A big-throated bike roared by, invisible beyond the parked cars. Impossible to tell if it was Pancho.
Then an idea popped up. I left the car, scanned the lot for foe, and scuttled into K-Mart.
The shirt counters were served by a middle-aged Mexican American woman with a gentle face. The corpse of my shirt surprised her into Spanish: “¿Que paso?”
I summoned a grin. “Touch football in the parking lot. Got a little rough.”
A snort at loco Anglos who play football on parking lots in April yet. “I guess you need a shirt.”
“I guess I do. And is there a pay phone?”
“In back, next to Automotive.”
Not too specific. In these neighborhoods, “Automotive” takes up half the store.
* * * *
After phoning Scuzzy, I spent an hour trapped in K-Mart: stereos, motor oil, calculators, sneakers. ATTENTION K-MART SHOPPERS! Maternity clothes, roasted nuts, trash cans, pliers, Pampers, plastic pools, popcorn.
I killed time with a burger and Coke in the coffee shop, then made my way toward the entrance.
“Hold it!” The young security guard looked as if he read Soldier of Fortune and daydreamed of the Hitler Jugend.
“The shirt?” A tight-lipped nod. I pulled the sales slip from my new breast pocket.
He was scowling at the slip when Scuzzy Fenster thudded through the automatic front doors and spotted me. He rumbled up in full biker regalia, like a leather tank. “This man giving trouble, Sergeant?”
The guard wheeled on him, encountered Scuzzy’s wishbone, blinked, tilted up to frame Scuzzy’s face, blinked again. “You addressing me?”
Scuzzy raised a benedictory arm the size of a small tree: “Seek no intimacy with the ruling powers. Rabbi Shemaiah.” He coiled the arm around my shoulder. “I’ll take over, Colonel; he’s quite harmless but it is time for his lithium.” Suspicion and relief contended on the guard’s pink face as Scuzzy bustled me out the door.
He grinned: “Speak softly but carry a big self.”
“Rabbi Roosevelt. Thanks for coming, Scuzz. What’re you driving?”
“Behold.” We stopped beside a customized Harley Electra Glide: 1300 cc engine, kandy-flake paint, longhorn handlebars plus about 200 lights, reflectors, and doodads.
“Glad it has a pillion seat.”
Scuzzy slapped his beer keg butt: “And shocks, praise heaven. Hop on.”
“You know the drill?”
“You told me on the phone: I scare the illustrated man into telling where the boss is hanging out.”
He straddled the bike with a mighty leg and I climbed on behind. I hated to think what his weight would do to a kick starter, but Scuzzy fiddled with something in front of him and the cycle cleared its throat and purred.
I gave him the address. “And take it easy: I haven’t much to grab back here.”
“Not to worry.”
A neck-snapping launch, a tight slalom among car-bound shoppers, hard right at the entrance, and across heavy traffic to the far-left lane. Slamming into Scuzzy’s mountain back as we skidded to a stop for a red light; then a left turn, two quick blocks, left again on Vaca, and roaring through the twilight to the Black Pussy Cafe, where Scuzzy put the Harley into a controlled skid that left us perfectly aligned with the other parked bikes.
“Not to worry, he says.”
Scuzzy locked the bike. “Surprise them: you go first.”
“Okay. Let’s do Lennie and George; that way, you don’t have to know anything.”
Scuzzy nodded.
Shading my eyes from the lights on the bar facade, I strolled through the greasy curtains. This time, I could see a dozen customers at tables, a new dancer on the platform, and my playmates in position at the pool table.
I took a stool at the bar, ordered a beer, and watched idly as the bartender oozed down to the other end to signal Tats and Pancho.
In due course a bulky form filled the space on either side of me and Tats said “Hey, Pancho, he just can’t keep away from faggot pool.”
I looked at them in the bar mirror. “Evening, gents.”
Both my arms were grabbed; but then their reflections froze as gargantuan hands descended on their necks and Scuzzy’s near-subsonic thunder rumbled forth: “Hi, guys.” Their own hands fell away from me.
“Gentlemen, meet a fellow bro.” I used Scuzzy’s film character name: “His handle’s Ton.”
Pancho gaped at the Volcanic image looming in the mirror. “It fits.”
“Short for ‘Megaton.’ Want to meet my friend, Tats?”
“Go piss up a rope.” But suddenly he needed to clear his throat.
Scuzzy said “Aww...” like a disappointed child.
My soothing voice: “No no, they like you, Ton; they’re just a little... crusty. Let’s all go over to the pool table and get acquainted.”
I rose and Scuzzy jacked up their necks, forcing them to follow or risk three inches of swift, unwanted growth. Repeatedly they tried to wrench away, but Scuzzy just pretended not to notice. As we made a stately progress toward the rear I smiled at the dancer, another stringy country girl in heels and little else, and she waved back.
When we reached the cone of yellow light, Scuzzy spun the boys around, grabbed Tats by the overall bib and Pancho by his beard, and sat them on the pool table.
I smiled, doing Jack Nicholson: “Now boys, Ton here is real anxious to meet Bull Dike.”
Scuzzy: “Yeah.”
“The trouble is, Ton can’t find him anywhere.”
“Yeah, uh, no.”
“And Ton felt you guys would like to help.”
“Yeah.” With each amen, Scuzzy bounced them where they sat.
Teary from the tension on his beard, Pancho gripped Scuzzy’s paw in two hands. “All I know, he went away.”
Scuzzy: “Aww...”
Pancho’s voice skipped up half an octave: “I dunno where. Tats knows.”
“Fuck you,” from Tats.
“Aww...” Suddenly reversing thrust, Scuzzy shoved Tats’s solar plexus so hard that he slammed back on the pool table. His head thudded on the slate.
“You can’t...”
“Aww...” and Scuzzy slammed him again. The whole bar was staring now, the bartender frozen and the dancer looking on as if with secret satisfaction. The huge speakers magnified the sound of the record stylus grinding down an inner groove.
“Hey Tats, the thing is, we’re disturbing folks. Now you can be polite or we can all go outside and leave the folks in peace. Ton, the boys here mentioned an empty garage nearby.”
“Yeah?” Taking the idea as an order, Scuzzy lifted Tats and Pancho and started for the door, dragging the bikers like feed sacks.
“Shitawright. He’s up at Fender airstrip - in the hangar.”
“Bring them back, Ton. Where’s that?”
“Off the old Sierra Highway. You wanna lemme go?”
“All in good time. Now listen, Tats. Uh, Ton, do I have Tats’s attention?”
SLAM! “Yeah.”
“Thank you. Tats, you’re a nice cooperative guy, but something tells me, when we leave here you’re going to phone Bull Dike.”
“Aww...”
“No, Ton, it’s okay. Tats, you tell Bull we’re coming up there clean and open. All we want is help with Caudle’s problem. No muscle; no hassle. Got that?” A surly nod. “Real fine, Tats; now how about you good buddies walk us to the door.”<
br />
Scuzzy re-executed the spin-and-grab maneuver and we all paraded past the smiling dancer, the rapt customers, and the frozen bartender to the front door, where I turned to address the audience. “Sorry for the fuss, folks. Y’all have a good night now. Okay, Ton.”
Another spin, then Scuzzy sent the bikers staggering forward into the nearest table as I ducked out.
He caught me up at the Harley. “Old Sierra Highway, Stoney?”
“Not without a jacket on that bike; it’s too cold. Let’s go back to the Beetle.”
“Yeah.”
“I must say, Scuzz, you’re great at learning lines.”
He made a face. “Violence, though, is still a problem for me.”
Chapter 11
Driving Beetle Bumble up the freeway in the dark, I watched Scuzzy handle the immense Harley as if it were a ten-speed bike. As he faded, glowed, and faded in my feeble headlights, I reflected that his engine was bigger than my car’s. Awesome to the max, as the natives used to say.
We returned to the motel, where I fetched a heavy jacket, briefed Scuzzy on his next role, and located the airstrip on my auto Club map. Then I mounted the pillion of Scuzzy’s dragon, regretting that I didn’t believe in rosaries or something.
Swooping gracefully along roads like Moebius strips, lit only by stars and the Harley’s wobbling headlight, we surged toward Fender Airstrip. Scuzzy’s mighty back offered perfect wind protection, little forward vision, and no handhold. It was like riding behind a Barcalounger. I clamped my knees and tried not to think about it.
Scuzzy had no trouble being heard over the wind and motor: “That’s about eight miles.”
“The airstrip road’s on the right.”
“What?”
“ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD!
A dirt track in fact; rutted, twisted, mined with vicious pebbles. The Harley howled and rumbled with Scuzzy’s constant shifting and the trail swerved so sharply in the blackness that we often slowed to nearly walking speed. After a mile that took almost ten minutes, dim lights appeared, the road straightened out, and we rolled onto a long and level field.
Fender Airstrip was a minimal flat spot in the remote hills, perfect for self-effacing farmers flying to market with recreational crops. A tarmac runway without lights, a shuttered office, and a pair of fuel pumps. The place looked deserted and even the flaccid windsock seemed to have punched out for the day. A distant glow picked out the round-roofed hangar down near one end of the runway.