Mendoza in Hollywood (5 page)

“You killed the guy!” I gasped, rising shakily to my knees. The horses stood calmly cropping scrub, as though nothing had happened.

“Gee, I wish he hadn’t done that.” Einar stood and peered down the hill. “I thought he was going to leave me alone this time.”

“You mean he’s taken shots at you before?” I was incredulous. “And we rode up here anyway? Into
danger
?”

“What danger?” Einar loaded another couple of shells. “Stupid bastard knew he couldn’t hit me, after all the times he’s tried it. I’d shown him what I had to throw at him, too. When you’re too dumb to learn, you’re out of the gene pool, man. Down here, anyway.”

I stood staring into the silent canyon. Cool air currents brought up a smell of cut sage and fresh blood. I half-expected sirens or shouting, but all I heard was the wind. “Shouldn’t we go down and do something?” I suggested.

“Nope.” Einar slung his gun back over his shoulder. “That’s what buzzards are for. Turkey vultures, actually, according to J. B.” He bent and offered me his cupped hands to climb back into the saddle. I vaulted up and sat there, bent forward nervously as he got back on his own horse.

“Let’s get off the skyline, shall we?” I said. He nodded, and we moved on, descending the gentle ridges through the aromatic brush. After a moment I asked, “But who was he? He had to have had some family or somebody, someone we should notify.”

Einar shook his head. “He killed ’em. That was why he was hiding out up here. Thirty-year-old Caucasian male psychopath from St.
Louis, Missouri. Also killed two Mexican hookers and three Chinese guys of assorted vocations. I don’t know why.”

“Oh,” I said. We rode on.

After a while, I ventured, “Are there many like him down here?”

“Some,” Einar said. He got a loopy grin on his face. “But mostly lions and tigers and the California brown bear!”

“Oh my,” I responded faintly. What sort of crazy place was this?

“Come on.” He turned in his saddle to look at me, all alight with an idea. “I know that was a pretty grim scene up there. I’ll show you something nice. You want to see? Come on.” And he spurred his horse down the trail in front of me, and I followed while he chanted about the lions and tigers and bears all the way. Nobody else shot at us.

Below the foothills we came upon a sandy wagon track that ran east and west, in a fairly straight line through clumps of wild buckwheat and chaparral. We took it east, as I stared around in cautious expectation.

“Road to nowhere in particular,” Einar said, “at the present time. But in a couple more decades, it’ll be Prospect Avenue, when the genteel folks from back east build a little community here. Shortly thereafter they’ll change the name to Hollywood Boulevard. Right here, to the left and right, the Walk of Stars will run. The neatest part, though, the
really
neat part, most people will never know about.”

“And that would be?”

“This way.” He urged his mount forward, counting off nonexistent cross streets on his interior map: “Highland, McCadden, Las Palmas, Cherokee . . .” Abruptly he turned his horse’s head, and we left the trail a few yards north into the trackless thicket. “Here.” He looped up the reins, slid from the saddle, and stood beaming at me, as though the Holy Grail was pulsing over the nearest cactus clump.

“Okay, señor.” I looked from side to side. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“You’re seeing the nice little streets laid out just like back east, with shady trees and picket fences and charming rose-covered cottages.
Okay? All the white latticework and clapboard and gingerbread that relocated Yankees gotta have. It’ll all be here. And right here, on this very spot, will stand the very nicest house with the very nicest garden, and you know whose house it’ll be?” He held out his hands, as if framing a picture for me. “L. Frank Baum’s. Ozcot, he’ll call the place. This is where he’ll settle down, this is where he’ll write most of his books about the Tin Man and the Scarecrow and the rest of ’em. How many generations of children will read every word he wrote? How many kids will dream about escaping to Oz, and keep on dreaming about it when they’re sick and old?”

“You’re kidding.” I dismounted and stared around, trying to see the fairy-tale house and its flowers in the midst of this wild place.

“I’m not. He’ll even build a movie studio out there and produce his own Oz movies, years before MGM even exists. But then he dies, eventually, and guess what his wife does?
She burns his original manuscripts
. She doesn’t think they’re worth anything, so she piles them into the backyard incinerator, and they’re reduced to ashes. All that magic, all those winkies and witches sift down in a fine silver dust through the grate and lie there forgotten, under an incinerator in a neglected garden behind a house that eventually gets sold and bulldozed.” He made a leveling gesture with his hands.

“Neighborhood changes. Little houses get torn down, one by one. Gardens are paved over. A cheesy apartment building is built on this site. Right over there, the limousines zoom by, stars go to dinner at Musso & Frank’s Grill, tourists wander the Walk of Stars and see the names of Judy Garland and Ray Bolger and everybody, and all the time this powder of dreams is buried and forgotten.”

I stared at him, almost hearing the blaring horns of the traffic, almost breathing in the smell of expensive cigars and auto exhaust.

Smiling, Einar raised an index finger. “
Until
,” he said, “a young artist named Lincoln Copeland—”

“Oh, come on, not
the
Lincoln Copeland.”

“Yes,
the
Lincoln Copeland comes out to Hollywood in 2076 to sketch the ruins. His timing’s real bad. The Billy Tahiti riot breaks out
while he’s there. Bombs are going off all around him. He finds a bomb crater and dives for cover under a tipped-up piece of concrete that used to be a garage floor. He finds he’s sitting in the middle of all this amazing gray dust.

“Now, by an incredible coincidence, L. Frank Baum is his favorite author, and luckily there’s a street sign still standing. Copeland
knows
where he is, he knows this bomb crater was a magician’s garden once, and he knows the story about the burnt manuscripts. What does he do?
He fills his pockets with dust
. With bullets whizzing and souvenir stands burning all around him, the guy crams all the gray dust he can carry into his pockets. And as soon as it’s dark, he makes his way to Sunset Boulevard and follows it all the way to the beach, where he manages to thumb a ride out of the riot zone.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“I swear to God! And as soon as he’s out of harm’s way, he finds a glass jar and shakes out his pockets, takes off every stitch he’s got on and beats out the gray dust, and fills the jar. He takes it home with him. It’s after that that his career takes off, that he suddenly begins painting those fantastic landscapes and allegorical murals that make him so amazingly rich. He doesn’t know why he sees the things he sees when he picks up a brush, but he suspects it’s because he dabs a tiny pinch of that gray dust on his palette every time he starts a new piece. He says so in his autobiography, written in 2140.”

Einar bent and scooped up a double handful of sand, and let it sift through his fingers. “Right here. It’s all right here, waiting to happen, man. Immanent. The air is on fire with it. Jesus, I love this town.”

I started and stared, because for just a second I had seen it all: the pretty houses, the ruined city in flames, the Yellow Brick Road curving away up the wall of a soundstage.

“You are nuts,” I said. “But I’ll bet the Company brings you back here.”

“Gotta hope.” He grinned. Suddenly his gaze focused on a point in the distance behind me. He reached up for one of his shotguns. I dove for the dirt. “No, it’s okay!” he said. “This is the trank gun.” He
aimed and fired. There was a dull bang and a plaintive little yip, and destiny had found another coyote.

We returned to the inn as darkness was falling. I had a couple of specimens of rare members of the artemisia family in my collecting kit, and Einar had a neatly trussed coyote sleeping peacefully in a wicker creel behind him. There was a loud argument going on around the cooking fire. The principal raised voice was female.

“That man had actually participated in the Bear Flag Rebellion!” Imarte was wailing. “Do you realize what a unique opportunity has been lost? Have you any idea of the insights he could have given us into the mind-set of the Anglo-American rebels?”

“I said I was sorry.” Juan Bautista sounded as though he would have liked to crawl into a hole in the sand. “But Erich will die if he doesn’t get the right food. It’s not like I was chewing it up and vomiting it for him, anyway.”

“Oh, my goddess.” Imarte flung up her arms in disgust.

“The thing stinks, Juan. You’re going to have to feed your bird someplace else, okay?” Porfirio said. As we rode into the clearing under the trees, it became obvious what he meant: someone, presumably Juan Bautista, had dragged a carcass into the clearing. It had been either a large dog or a small deer. I wasn’t a zoologist, so I didn’t know which. It had been worked over by coyotes already, so I doubted whether anyone else could have told either. Erich von Stroheim (that was what the baby condor had been christened) was sitting on it, looking bewildered. When Imarte raised her voice again, the bird ducked his head and shook his wings desperately, squeaking.

“I don’t care what the little horror needs, he doesn’t have to have it here when I’m bringing home a client,” she said.

“Oh dear.” Einar swung out of the saddle. “You lose another John?”

It seemed that the stagecoach had made a stop, and while the horses were being changed and the drivers were refreshing themselves, Imarte had sallied down and offered refreshment to the passengers.
One gentleman had felt confident enough in his appetite to be able to do justice to her offer in the comparatively brief time allotted, and so she’d led him up to the adobe. Unfortunately the first sight that met his eye was Erich von Stroheim pecking at his supper, watched fondly by Juan Bautista. Not only had the gentleman been unable to avail himself of the refreshment offered, he’d lost the lunch he’d partaken of earlier in the day, and departed hastily.

“This
cannot
happen again,” raged Imarte. “That creature
cannot
be allowed to interfere with my work, do you understand? It’s not even as though he can be trained to live in the wild. He’s nothing but a pet.”

“That’s enough.” Porfirio held up his hand. “Juan, take the carcass away now. Downwind, please. We can work out a supplement with chopped beef and an enzyme formula, okay? He’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” Dejectedly Juan picked up the little condor and buttoned him inside his shirt. The bird made happy sounds. Juan took the dead thing by one leg and dragged it away into the darkness. Imarte went flouncing off to her room.

“Ay-ay-ay.” Porfirio put his face in his hands. “And was your day good? Tell me your day was good.”

“It was good,” I said. Einar took down the creel—the coyote twitched and growled in its sleep—and unsaddled our horses. He led them off to the stable, whistling a little tune.

“Hell-oooo, everybody, I’m home,” said Oscar as he strode into the circle of firelight, leading his mule. Behind them the patent peddler’s cart lurched from side to side, catching its roof on the lower branches of the oak trees.

“And you had a good day too,” Porfirio said.

“Oh, first-rate. Finally persuaded Mr. Cielo over at the walnut orchard that he absolutely required the civilizing influence of music in his home. He took a flageolet and six pieces of sheet music. Any day now his neighbors (when he gets them) can expect to hear the strains of popular selections from
The Bohemian Girl
wafting through the walnut trees.”

“Nice going.” Porfirio poked up the fire. “Get any good material on him?”

“Oh, certainly.” Oscar set the hand brake on his cart and let the mule out from between the traces. “Got a fair holo of his kitchen and a splendid one of the parlor, all furnishings in situ. Extensive vocal recordings, too. Got him to tell me half the story of his life. The archivists will be pleased with yours truly, I shouldn’t wonder.” He patted his mule fondly.

“So that’s what you do?” I asked. “You go around pretending to peddle stuff, and while people are talking to you, you record details of historical interest about them?”

“Yes indeed! Though I hasten to add that no pretending is involved. I am a true and bona fide salesman of the first water. It’s more than a matter of personal pride with me, you see, that I can play the golden-tongued orator with the best of them when it comes to persuading a reluctant dweller in adobe that he or she wants—nay,
must
have—a patent cherry-pitting device superior to all previous models.” Oscar was completely serious.

“Yeah, you are one nickel-plated Demosthenes, all right,” Einar said, emerging from the stable to take charge of the mule. “Hey, Amelia, sweetie! How we doing, babe? How’s our little hooves today?”

“No trace of lameness, I’m pleased to report,” Oscar said. “She appears to have regained her customary surefootedness.”

“Great.” Einar led her away, and Oscar strutted up to the fire, hands in pockets.

“Yes, a most successful day. Might I inquire what’s for supper this evening?”

“Grilled beef, tortillas, and frijoles,” Porfirio said. “I just haven’t had time to put it on yet.”

“H’m.” Oscar stood there in the light of the fire, rocking back and forth, a small frown on his bland face. “No chance of any cabbage, I suppose.”

“What do you want, man? It’s February.”

“Oh, quite, quite, I see your point. You know what I’d like to do, though, when we can get a little more garden produce? I’d like to serve you folks a real authentic New England boiled supper. Yes,
sir
. You’d enjoy it no end. I daresay I could make the brown bread to go with it, too. I’ve got cans of molasses and a cake of raisins in my cart. Just the thing for a nippy night.”

“Sure,” Porfirio said without enthusiasm. He gave a narrow-eyed smile. “I meant to ask you: have you managed to sell that Criterion Patented Brassbound Pie Safe yet?”