BECAUSE THE NIGHT

411

“The . . . they’re for protection.”

“From the people who hurt you? From the woman who hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“Aha, the truth outs. Let me set you straight on something. Muscles don’t rule the world, brains do. Which is how a wimp like Havilland can make a slave out of someone big and strong like you. People protect each other with their love, not their muscles. Someone, probably some woman, hurt you really badly. She didn’t do it with her muscles, because she didn’t have any. You can’t get revenge by hitting back at people the way they hit at you, because then the people who hurt you win—by making you like them. Aren’t you hip to that?”

“No. It’s different with Doctor John. He took me beyond my beyond.”

“What’s your beyond?”

“No!”

“Hurting women? You can’t hurt me, because I’m smarter than you and stronger than you, and because that wimp downstairs told you not to. Some fucking beyond. Brown-noser to a freaked-out headshrinker who’s going to end up in the locked ward at Camarillo for life. Who’s going to protect you when he’s wearing a straitjacket and sucking baby food out of a straw?”

“No! No! No no no no no. No.”

“Yes, Richard. Yes. Besides, how many beyonds have you got? One? Two?

Three? You don’t seem too fulfilled to me. It’s old wimpy’s beyonds we’re talking about, Richard. I almost wish you’d try to get violent with me, so I’d know you had the guts to disobey your slavemaster.”

“What makes you think you’re so smart and so tough?”

“I don’t know. Do you know that I’m not scared of you?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s your answer.”

“What would you do if I tried to hurt you?”

“Fight back. Watch you get turned on and watch you lose.”

“Doctor said you’re a whore. Whores are wrong. Whores are bad.”

“You almost got me there, but you missed by a few days. I quit. I walked. I walked. You can, too. You can walk out the door and wave goodbye to the Doctor, and he’ll be terrified, because without you he’s just another L.A. fruitcake with no place to hang his hat. Think on that. I’m going to try to sleep, but you think on that.”

The Night Tripper awakened, instantly aware that his corkboard dreams had destroyed the music voices in bedroom number three. He checked the 412

L.A. NOIR

console and saw that he had forgotten to hit the “record” switch, then heard a soft male sobbing come over the speakers and pictured Richard distraught over his dictate not to hurt the whore. Richard was a day too late. Linda was his. In the morning he would sacrifice her to his father’s memory. He would end the game on his own terms. 25

Dawn.

Lloyd sped north on Pacific Coast Highway, running on adrenaline, rage, and terror. His jeopardy gambit had become a sacrificial offering, and if the fires had already been fed, he would have to take out the Beach Womb and everyone in it and throw himself into the flames. He looked at the pump shotgun resting on the seat beside him. Five rounds. Enough for Havilland, Oldfield, two miscellaneous worshippers, and himself. The thought of self-immolation jerked his mind off of the immediate future and back to the immediate past. After leaving Bergen and Nagler, he had driven to Linda’s apartment. She was not there, and her Mercedes was not in the garage. Now frightened, he had run dome light and siren to Havilland’s Century City office. The night watchman in the lobby told him that he had admitted a very beautiful young woman at about seven o’clock, and that an hour later the nice Dr. Havilland and another man had brought her downstairs, looking high as a kite. “Emergency tooth extraction,” the Doctor had said. “I’m not a dentist, but I gave it a go anyway.” The two men had then hustled the near-comatose woman off in the direction of the parking lot. After frantically driving by Havilland’s Beverly Hills condo and finding no one there, Lloyd had run code three to the Pacific Palisades residential address of Ginjer Buchanan of Ginjer Buchanan Properties. The woman was not at home, but her live-in housekeeper succeeded in rousing her by phone at her boyfriend’s apartment in Topanga Canyon. After Lloyd explained the urgency of the matter, the realtor agreed to meet him at her of-