Mendoza in Hollywood (Company) Page 5

  As we entered the plain below the foothills, the land opened out more and changed: low green hills gently rolling as far as the eye could see, dotted with oak trees and starred everywhere with golden poppies. Here and there wandered herds of longhorn cattle, grazing and growing fat.

  “See those guys?” Einar’s voice was sober. “This is their last hurrah. Nobody knows it yet, of course, but this drought will pretty much wipe them out. And when they go, the old Mexican gentry go too; they’ll lose their revenue, get into debt to the Yankees, and sell off their estates. Boom, whole way of life gone. The Yankees will run cattle after the drought, but not these longhorns: they’ll bring in their own stock, Jerseys and Holsteins—Eurocows. All kinds of useful genetic traits scheduled to disappear from the bovine gene pool when these longhorns nearly go extinct. It’ll be a bitch collecting specimens—expensive, too—but I really should get started on it.”

  “Why expensive?” Imarte asked. “I should imagine the rancheros will be desperate to sell, once the drought is in progress.”

  “Yeah, but by then the specimens will be weak and stressed out. The Company wants healthy, happy cows.” Einar shook his head.

  I sat up and stared at the gentle landscape, so pastoral, such an idyll. Cracked earth and skeletons soon, to be followed by another Eden, this time of prosperous little Yankee orange groves, to be followed by a gray wasteland of diesel exhaust, concrete, and steel. Paradise and hell, boom and bust, together forever in Los Angeles. I shivered and wished I was back in Big Sur.

  We followed the Hollywood Freeway route all the way into the city, creaked gradually uphill, and paused at the top of a long low ridge. Einar pointed at the vista below us, a wide gesture taking in the whole horizon. “There you go, Mendoza. The original wretched hive of villainy and scum.”

  It didn’t look particularly dangerous. What surprised me was the space it took up. It sprawled and sprawled, out to the edges of the sky, and yet you could count the number of two-story buildings on the fingers of one hand. Right below us was a squat brick thing like an armory in a weedy central plaza crisscrossed with dirt paths. I found out later that it was a cistern for dry years. There was a solid-looking church with its back to us—recently repaired, to judge from the two-tone plaster. There were a couple of stately adobes with pink tile roofs and peeling whitewash. But the vast majority of structures were little flat-topped shacks with tarred roofs, rows of them leaning on one another and single ones peeping out from orchards or ranged across fields. I couldn’t see a single living soul moving in that vast panorama. You could have fit every other city in California into the space Los Angeles took up, and yet it looked like nothing so much as somebody’s big cow pasture, with an unusual number of cowsheds. A dark line of willows and cottonwoods snaked through it, and one particularly big sycamore: the trees must have marked the bed of the Los Angeles River, which actually had water in it this year.

  Crack! A bullet tore up weeds a few yards down the hill from where we were parked. Oh, here was somebody. We looked down into the belligerent stare of a man who had come out to the edge of his little orchard. He was lowering a long rifle.

  “Thass a wahnin’!” he called hoarsely. “Y’all stay outa mah orchard. Come down some otha place!”

  Einar grinned and signed tipping his hat. “You bet, Davy Crockett!” He shook the reins and turned us around, and we followed the trail along the ridge and down into town. Well, it was clear where all the people must be: hiding. My knuckles were white as I clenched the sides of the wagon.

  “Does everybody shoot at perfect strangers here?” I asked between clenched teeth.

  “If they think you’re going to trespass on their property, yeah,” said Einar. He began to sing a ballad about Davy Crockett, waving one arm for dramatic emphasis.

  “Oh, shut up,” said Imarte, and for once I agreed with her.

  There actually was a business district, with some Yankee-style stores of brick and of timber, and a couple of adobes Yankeefied with false fronts. Here was where all the people had got to. There were wagons like ours rumbling to and fro, driven by Mexicans or Yankees. There were white boys leaning in the doorways of saloons, looking out at the world through painfully narrowed Clint Eastwood eyes. There were Mexican dons on elegantly caparisoned horses pacing along, and some of these were distinctly African in appearance: dignified old gentlemen whose great-grandfathers had bought their way out of slavery by joining the Spanish army and exploring the New World. And here was a genuine Indian begging in the gutter, with eerily empty eyes. Imarte leaned over and said a few words to him as we passed. His gaze snapped into focus for a moment and locked on her. He shouted something in a desperate voice and stumbled after the wagon, dragging one foot. Imarte made a face and tossed him a coin. He fell flat, covering it with his body. I looked away. Imarte shook her head.

  “That man’s race once conquered all their neighbors, for hundreds of miles to the north and east. They had a sophisticated monotheistic religion the equal of Christianity or Islam. Look at him now.” Sic transit Chinigchinix, I thought.

  In the next block, we passed another prostrate beggar, drunk and wailing out “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton” in ghastly Southend Cockney. Two gutters over, an obvious native of Georgia was murdering “Sweet Betsy from Pike.” And a Mexican crawling along on hands and knees implored his little white dove to return to his embrace. The mud is a democratic place, at least.

  And here were señoritas de mala vida, dressed like our Imarte, liberally represented by the assorted races, swinging along with the set smiles, upper-arm bruises, and blank eyes of the true professional. And a Chinese fellow going somewhere in quiet, self-effacing haste. And an august old shopkeeper standing just inside the door of his emporium and jingling his keys as he watched the passing scene: a Jew, to judge from the name painted on his sign. He looked exactly like Uncle Sam. Put him in a striped top hat and long tailcoat, and he could have posed for a twentieth-century war bond poster.

  On Calle Principal we pulled up in front of a little place whose sign read BELLA UNION. It was dark and dirty. Imarte jumped down from her seat with the grace of a cat and made straight for the door, a gleam in her eye.

  “Wait a minute,” Einar said, sliding down. “Marcus has something in his hoof. Whats’a matter, boy?”

  I climbed down while he coaxed the horse to put its foot up for him. Was the hotel as bad inside as it looked from the street? I ventured close enough to peer inside. God, it was worse. That couldn’t be a dirt floor, could it?

  There at the long bar was Imarte, advancing on the British tar who had just been served a local beer and was now staring at his glass with horrified wonder.

  “Hello there, sailor. In town long?” she said, flexing a tit at him. “Got time to tell me your life story?”

  He turned to meet her eyes. “It’s like piss, for Chrissake!” he complained.

  Silly me, to stand in the doorway of a lesser class of hotel looking amused. A regular customer mistook my smile and was suddenly in front of me, breathing rye whiskey through the fringe of his mustache.

  “Well, now, señorita, you looking for someone to dance with? You want me to show you how we dance the fandango out Durango way, huh? Nice earrings. They real gold, Chiquita?” He reached for my face.

  I took two hasty steps backward and summoned up my best Katherine Hepburn imitation. “Sir, if you ever presume to lay hands upon me, I assure you legal action will follow! Do I make myself clear, you palsied, imbecilic, and alcoholic cretin?”

  He staggered back, very surprised. “Lady, I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I thought you was Spanish.”

  Mental note: Leave the gold hoops at home next time you visit sunny downtown Los Angeles. And ditch the rebozo, too. I turned on my heel and stalked out. Einar was just releasing Marcus’s hoof. He stared at me openmouthed. “You went in there?”

  “Stupid, wasn’t it?” I agreed, climbing up on the seat. “Let’s get the hell out of here, shall we?” I didn’t like
mortals, I really didn’t like mortals. In fact, I hated the sight and the smell of them.

  “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink,” he said.

  “Not in there, you won’t.”

  He got his crazy smile again. “How about a cocktail in the Lost City of the Lizard People?”

  It turned out that if you went to a drab-looking little adobe on Calle Primavera and knocked, a mortal man would let you in and obligingly help you unload your crates of tranquilized coyotes. He would then slide back a section of the floor, revealing a service elevator, on which the coyotes descended toward a new life following air transport to a Company zoo. The man would then bow you to an ornate wardrobe, which, when opened, proved to be a passenger elevator. Once you entered it, it dropped with unnerving speed thirty stories to a short length of tunnel tiled in gold enamel. At the end of the tunnel was a first-rate Company cocktail lounge, beyond which was a Company transport terminal, also tiled in gold enamel.

  “There’s miles of tunnel, running all the way to the undersea base in the Catalina Channel,” Einar told me over a couple of margaritas. “And one long tunnel runs out to the Mojave base under the sand.”

  “Nice.” I bit into my wedge of lime. “But what’s with the lizard motif?” I waved a hand at the decor. There were lizard patterns on everything, woven into the carpet, tooled into the booth leather, printed on the cocktail napkins.

  “Joke,” he said. “In 1934, this guy will claim that an old Indian told him about a highly advanced race of lizard people who retreated underground following a global catastrophe in 3000 B.C.E. They built a city in the shape of a giant lizard and a maze of gold-filled tunnels right here under Los Angeles, supposedly, using magic chemicals that melted through bedrock. Rooms crammed with gold and sacred tablets, all kinds of weird shit. So anyway, this guy claims he’s found out where the gold chambers are, using an invention he calls the Radio X-Ray, and he actually gets permission from the city authorities to drill. Tells them he’s located a treasure room a thousand feet down. He only goes about three hundred fifty feet before the shaft starts to collapse. Tells the city he’s putting the dig on hold until he can solve the technical problems, which he expects to do in no time. Then he vanishes. Drops out of sight. Never heard from again. Obviously the lizard people got him.”

  “Obviously.”

  “It gets weirder. This’ll be in 1934, right? But by 1931 the Company will have abandoned this base and filled in the tunnels. Earthquake in Long Beach the next year, remember? By the time the guy claims to detect the tunnels, they won’t be there anymore. Last call at the old Lizard Bar was months beforehand. Nuts, huh?”

  “Nuts. Unless maybe the man is an undiagnosed remote viewer.”

  “Could be.” Einar tilted his glass. “Want another cocktail?”

  AFTER THAT VISIT I was content to stay close to Hollywood, venturing out to collect specimens when Einar’s schedule allowed him to go with me. No more argument on my part that I didn’t need an escort. Hot lead seemed to be the language of social encounter down there, and I felt squeamish about becoming fluent in it, though I dutifully practiced hyperfunction with a Navy pistol.

  We were by no means so isolated as I had thought. We got mail; we got magazines. We subscribed to the Los Angeles Estrella/Star, to a couple of back-east papers so we could follow the Civil War news, and Porfirio had a subscription to Punch, of all things. I read it for the humor, though the British slant on the war was strange. They played both sides of the diplomatic fence with a prissy hypocrisy that I took to be Victorian. I wasn’t impressed. I had known the brilliant savages of the Tudor period firsthand, and, though I’d never thought I’d say it, I preferred them to their smug descendants.

  Yes, we really had our window onto the world, despite the lack of radio for the local Company news—no reception back in our canyon, because those granite hills kept the feeble broadcast out. And we made our own nightlife; we even had movies. Not holos, you understand, movies.

  I woke from uneasy dreams one bright morning to find a card stuck in my boots. Yawning, I examined it, sitting on the edge of my cot. It was cream-colored pasteboard, inscribed by hand in purple ink, with nice calligraphy, and it told me that I was invited to the Cahuenga Pass Film Festival, which was to take place tonight at 2000 hours sharp. This evening’s featured film: Hollywood’s first premiere of the director’s cut of Greed, based on Frank Norris’s classic novel McTeague, a tale of mortal doom. Approximate screening time nine hours, so refreshments would be provided. Formal dress optional. (Good; the closest thing I had to evening wear was a black rebozo.) Location: suite B of the Cahuenga Pass Hilton. (Yuck yuck.) My host: Einar.

  I pulled on my boots and wandered out to the fire, where Porfirio was frying breakfast. “Did you get one of these?” I held the card out to him. “What’s it all about?”

  “Didn’t you hear him chortling when the afternoon stage left yesterday?” Porfirio said, handing me a mug of coffee, which I accepted gratefully. “He got a big box he’d ordered from Central HQ. He was fussing around in his room all last night. He’s in there now, as a matter of fact. This should be some party.”

  “I guess.” I looked at the card doubtfully. “Will we all fit in his room? I’m not much for parties, really.”

  “It’s not a party party, it’s a film screening. He’s working like a dog to create a sense of occasion. I’m going, and you should too.” Porfirio looked at me sternly. “What else have you got to do tonight? Sit in your room and look at plant DNA? This will be good for you.”

  Actually I enjoyed sitting in my room in front of a cozily glowing credenza, but I didn’t want to disappoint Einar. Accordingly, at 2000 hours that evening I wrapped my black shawl around me and ventured into the adobe. I could see lamplight coming from Einar’s room; and was that music? It sounded like a selection of famous film themes by Hollywood composers, tinnily played on a battery-powered portable, and that in fact was what it was. But I barely noticed the music once I crossed the threshold of Einar’s room.

  He had worked to create a sense of occasion. It was a small square room with bare adobe walls and rough furniture of peeled logs and cowhide; but he had borrowed Imarte’s red velveteen bedspread and tacked it up in hanging swags against one wall, and a dusty oriental carpet had been rolled out on the floor, and a fairly clean sheet had been tacked up on another wall. That had to have come from Imarte’s bed, too. In fact, there was a lot of her finery draped around to give the room a film palace look. She was being an awfully good sport about this, wasn’t she? And there she stood in a ballgown of Arrest Me Red, holding forth sententiously to Oscar:

  “. . . outrageous what they did to von Stroheim, but it’s a classic case of the fate of great literature in Hollywood. Of course it was bound to happen, given the incredible social significance of Norris’s work. Audiences simply weren’t ready for the grim realism, the pitiless examination of hopelessness among the uneducated working classes, the dwindling of the American Dream to despair, the ugly realities of passion.”

  “You don’t say?” Oscar raised a graniteware coffee mug to his lips and took a cautious sip of the contents. He looked startled. “Good Lord, Einar, is this gin we’re drinking?”

  “Sure is,” Einar said, welcoming me with a bow and handing me my libation for the evening. He was resplendent in a black tailcoat, stiff collar, and flowing foulard tie. He’d greased and combed his hair back, and so had Porfirio, also dressed to the nines. They looked like a couple of cast members from a melodrama. “It’s a martini, complete with olive. Don’t worry, the gin hasn’t been anywhere near a bathtub. Mendoza, you look lovely this evening; pray be seated. A space has been reserved for you in the balcony.” He gestured grandly at his cowhide bed, which had been dressed up with needlepoint cushions. “You too, Imarte; and as highest-ranking cyborg here, Porfirio, you have the seat of honor between the ladies, okay? The rest of us gentlemen will be seated in the loge. Well, we’re only waiting for J. B. to make his fashionably late e
ntrance—”

  “Here I am. Sorry,” murmured Juan Bautista from the doorway. Apparently he had no shirts that weren’t plain calico, but he’d made a pasteboard shirtfront, inked a bow tie and little buttons on it, and pinned it to his chest. He’d made a little shirtfront for Erich von Stroheim too, and tied it around the bird’s repulsive neck with string. Erich huddled in his arms, looking at us doubtfully.

  “Cool! The director himself, here to attend his first Hollywood premiere!” Einar welcomed them in. “Have a seat, gentlemen, down in the loge—or maybe that’s the mezzanine.” It amounted to a row of pillows on the floor in front of the bed. Juan Bautista settled down comfortably crosslegged, and Oscar lowered into place beside him, grumbling about having to press his trousers tomorrow. Erich von Stroheim took an experimental peck at his own shirtfront, but Juan Bautista reproved him gently, closing his fingers around the nasty-looking beak. The bird lowered his head to be scratched, making a little pleading noise.

  “Well, the appointed hour is upon us,” said Einar, stepping to the front of the room, before the white sheet. He took his six-gun from his holster, and I half-expected him to shoot out the lamps, but he reversed it and held the butt to his face, pretending he was speaking into a microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen . . .” He altered his voice to sound as though he were speaking into a twentieth-century PA system, complete with the boom and squeal of badly adjusted speakers. “Ladies and gentlemen and, uh, condor, welcome to the first installment of the first-ever Cahuenga Pass Film Festival. And what a glittering turnout we have here tonight. We’re pleased to present, as our first offering, Director Erich von Stroheim’s immortal classic Greed, starring Jean Hersholt and Zasu Pitts. Do I see the director in the audience? Stand up and take a bow, Mr. von Stroheim!” Juan Bautista held up the bird and dipped him forward in a little bow. Erich gronked querulously and pecked to have his head scratched again. We all applauded.