"Now you're talking-showing the trust and generosity of spirit that I've come to expect of you, and which you've hardly ever regretted. Could I borrow some of the underwear and socks you bought? I'll take a quick shower and then we'll hit the road. Is your new toothbrush in the bathroom?"
"You didn't pick one up? God, you know I hate it when you use my toothbrush."
"I can put your cock in my mouth, but not your toothbrush."
"I don't brush my teeth with my cock."
"That's not what they say about you in Poughkeepsie."
TEN
Two hundred twelve people with bloodshot eyes and winter coats over their arms hiked down a series of long pastel corridors punctuated by ramps, belts, moving stairways, and tombstone-like inscriptions of welcome from Thomas C. Bradley, mayor.
Timmy said, "I accept the airline's word that this place is Los Angeles, but it feels like a subway station in Philadelphia."
"You'll like LA a little better once we're outside. Think of New Jersey with palm trees."
"I'll bet it's not as simple as that."
"You're right, it isn't."
Luggage-less except for Timmy's shopping bag, we moved directly to the car-rental agency and picked up a Ford Escort identical to the one we'd left at JFK.
Timmy said, "I thought everybody out here drove a Rolls. Or is there a thirty-day waiting period?"
"You're thinking of Beverly Hills. We're going to West Hollywood, where people still ride buses, or even walk on their feet. Another popular mode of transportation there is the skateboard with silver sparkles on the wheels."
"I saw one of those in Albany once, last summer in Washington park."
"What you saw in Albany was an individualist. In Los Angeles you'll witness the future of us all."
"What if I don't like it?"
"I guess you can always emigrate to Belgium."
"I don't believe it. Back east, people will shop in shopping malls, but in the end they'll refuse to live in them."
"Poughkeepsie will be under a big plastic dome, like the lid from a can of underarm deodorant, and underneath it'll look and feel just like this. Take it or leave it. It's this or Belgium."
"Well, I've always enjoyed powdered waffles."
A breeze from the mountains had shoved out to sea the gaseous tumor that often hangs over the LA basin, and the air was clean and pleasingly warm in the bleached winter sunlight. We drove north, then east on the San Diego and Santa Monica freeways, then over to Sunset Boulevard and checked into a motel in a neighborhood where the economy appeared to be based on service industries.
"How long will you be staying?" asked the desk clerk, a middle-aged man with sea-green hair growing out of both ears and all three nostrils.
"Two, three days."
"Want a woman?"
"No, thank you."
"A man?"
"We're here for the Moral Majority convention," Timmy said, "so watch your tongue, mister."
"I can get you a nice religious boy who likes to be hit with a palm frond."
I said, "What about a pair of secular humanist twins who'll recite Rousseau in our ears while they bang it at home? Can you get us that?"
"I'd have to make some calls."
"We've only got a few days, so get to work. We'll make it worth your while."
"I can get you Mormons in ten minutes. You don't want a nice clean Mormon?"
"Secular humanists, pops. You send over a couple of Augustinian friars, and we take our business elsewhere, got it?"
"Sure, but I'll have to make some calls."
Out back in our room, Timmy said, "I know the Beverly Hills Hotel is expensive, but do we have to cut corners this closely?"
"It's not that Michelin recommends this particular motel, but this is the neighborhood we'll be operating from. It's convenient. Al Piatek's address, as listed on his probated will, is not far from here, and so is the address on the Greyhound waybills for the five suitcases. My guess is, that's Joan Lenihan s address." I hauled out the five-pound LA phone book and found J. Lenihan at the address on the waybills. "That's it. We're here. We're getting close to finding out a few things."
"We're getting close to people who know a few things, but how can you be sure they'll tell you what they know?"
"I'm not. But it sure is great to be out of Albany, isn't it?" He gave me a look, then went about emptying his shopping bag and neatly placing its meager contents in a drawer. He had removed his thermal underwear in the airliner's lavatory-when I'd knocked on the door and asked if I could come in and watch how he went about this, he refused me- but we were both overdressed for the seventy-degree temperature, so we walked several blocks up to a slightly tonier neighborhood closer to Beverly Hills, found a men's store and bought chinos and polo shirts. All the shirts had the manufacturer's little logos on the front-small mammals, reptiles, amphibians. I asked for one with an invertebrate, but the clerk said he'd never heard of that company.
Timmy took the car, studied the rental agency's map of Greater Los Angeles, and headed downtown toward the LA County courthouse to further verify the authenticity of Al Piatek's will. Just before noon I walked up into the hills east of Sunset Boulevard to call on the woman I had been told was made of iron but was now prostrate with grief.
The apartment building was a well-preserved relic of ancient Los Angeles, about 1927. It was gray stucco with Spanish colonial grillwork, but it had Elizabethan exposed crossbeams and tile-roofed gables, like some bastard offspring of Queen Isabella and the Duke of Kent. The place was weird but imposing, a sturdy eccentric survivor that said patronize me if you want, but I am beyond the reach of your niggling aesthetic purity. A walkway of small raspberry-colored concrete squares led past a narrow expanse of shadowy green lawn that was clipped nearly to the roots, like a gay haircut in 1978, and up to a high arched entryway with mailboxes and door buzzers. I pressed the button for 5-H, under which the nameplate read
Lenihan — Tesney. She was a nurse, so she might be home. If she worked eight to four, I'd come back at four-thirty.
"Yes?"
"Mrs. Lenihan?"
"No, Mrs. Lenihan is-to whom am I speaking, please?"
"I'm Don Strachey, a friend of Jack's, and I'd like to talk to Mrs. Lenihan about him."
Her mike remained open, but no sound came forth.
I said, "Before he died Jack asked me to help him with a project that was important to him. I'm now attempting to complete the project, but I need help. I'd just like to sit down with her for a few minutes, if I may. I've flown all the way out here from Albany."
More empty static. Then: "Just a minute, please." The tone was hesitant but not hostile. The static clicked off. I checked my watch and it was nearly three minutes before the voice returned. "Joan says it's all right for you to come up. Just for a few minutes." The door buzzed open.
I took the elevator to the fifth floor and followed a carpeted high-ceilinged corridor to 5-H, where the door stood open and a woman too young to be Jack Lenihan's mother extended her hand and said, "I'm Gail Tesney, a friend of Joan's. Please come in."
I guessed her age to be forty-one or — two. She was tall and slender in white shorts and a red halter, with small breasts and the type of lithe but firm musculature that suggested her tan came from regular tennis and not from lying by the pool with the latest Cosmo. Her black hair was lustrous even in the half-light and I felt a faint stirring, a kind of nostalgia for something that had never been more than an enforced experiment in social conditioning with me, a vestigial twitch. She had a wide mouth, lively and slightly asym-metrical black eyes, and she looked relieved to see me, as if a burden she had been under finally was going to be shared.