submachinegun conciousness Chap 3:

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     I come busting in. Guess I forgot to knock. Johnny Sain is like that. A pretty off-the-wall character.
     “What the Jesus?” Greg leaped to his feet, turned around staring at me saucer-eyed.
     Art squinted at a 1957 Bel Air Chevy pull up in front of the 77 Sunset Strip port-cochere. “Sounds like a visitor. That you, Mr. Sain?”
     “Yuh.”
     “So it is!” Greg huffed out a breath, got hold of himself, grinned, face still flushed with shock. “If it ain’t my favorite tenant from downstairs who don’t pay no rent no more. How ya doin, Mr. Sain?”
     I took Greg’s measure, eyed him up and down: a flabby old wreck a foot shorter than me.
     “I useta have Johnny Sain’s baseball card. It’s true, Art,” Greg calls over his shoulder, keeps grinning at me. “He was quite a pitcher for the old Boston Braves back right after the War. They’d say: ‘First Spahn, then Sain, then pray for rain.’ Boston didn’t have no pitchin except Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain, ya see.”
     I saw right through him. Saw through his bull. Literally saw through his skull – empty of anything of interest. Kookie aided a stacked blonde out of the Chevy. Relieved her of the keys. Zoomed the coupe off into the lot.
     “I’m only kiddin about the card,” some bug cleared its throat, maybe a katydid with the croup, or a syphilitic cockroach. “I know you ain’t him. Just a coincidence. I possess my faculties. And I ain’t that old. My dad taught me that rhyme. He drove bus along Landsdown back in the 50s…”
     The voice became alum on the end of my tongue. Facial muscles tensed – barbwire wound on a drum. Hands cramped into knuckle sandwiches. In about five, maybe two seconds, I would be unable to help myself.
     Greg wobbled deliberately for the door, “I gotta go. Bye, Art. Pay rent, you get a chance – OK, Mr. Sain?” He slid out the door without waiting for reply from either of the two beings remaining in the apartment.
     I gravitated to the chair Greg had vacated. Stared at the enormous television. Inside his swank Hollywood office, Efrem Zimbalist examined a ballistics report.
     “Got the money for that coke you want?” Art said slowly, not taking his eyes from the screen.
     “Yuh.”
     I didn’t know it was a ballistics report. The sound was off, I’d come in in the middle. But this was that detective show set in Hollywood. Hollywood pretending to be itself; to be investigating itself.
     “Pawned your camera – hey?” Art grinned. Zimbalist frowned, picked up the phone on his desk, rapidly dialed. “How you gonna do your art with no camera? You totally sure you want this coke?”
     It would be OK. Coke help me complete Bandersnatch. Sniff enough, turn into work of real art, my head spin, art spin off. And I’d still do stuff with the rrhoids. Let it drift into the wind, never get photographed. Art for the moment. Art for the asshole. “Yuh.”
     “OK, sure. Got the cash?” Efrem Zimbalist looked up slowly as the blonde entered his plush office. “I mean, how much you wanna buy? I just did smack, so I’m talking a little slow. This must be the one where the babe took out her husband and is coming to Zimbalist because she needs to plant evidence the mob did it, have Zimbalist find the clues, draw his own conclusions.”
     I handed over six crisp hundreds. Art groped over, caught my hand, extracted the bills – all without breaking concentration on the screen.
     When he had the cash in his lap, he glanced down briefly; looked back up as the babe sat on the edge of Zimbalist’s desk – using nylons, lipstick, cigarette to cloy the air with cheesecake and death.
     “Wow! Six hundred bucks – this buys about a quarter ounce of high-grade Bolivian. This should totally make you crazy!”
     I smelled vinegar. Out of the corner of his eye Art caught me grimace.
     “Now, don’t try any of that face on me, man. I’m mellow as a cello, nothing can hurt me – I just snorted smack. So don’t bother to try…” Kookie helped the babe back into her Bel Air Chevy, leaned in through the window greasy hair and crooked smile. “Oh, the vinegar. Of course – you’re smelling the vinegar!”
     I turned on him a goofy stare of incomprehension, which – by cocking my head – I managed to pry up under his peripheral vision.
     “Yeah. I got a couple vinegaroons on my stove stewing in cough syrup. The syrup contains codeine, which chemically is totally similar to morphine. Heroin, as any schoolboy knows, is diacetyl morphine. That is, acetic acid combined with morph. Those vinegaroons are oozing acetic acid right now, as we speak, as I got ‘em simmering in with the Cheracol. No way they’ll die; syrup not hot enough. But maintaining constant fear and stress – like missionaries in the cannibal kettle – keeps the acid flowing.”
     Zimbalist – his black and white image nearly three feet high – knocked on a bungalow door, gazed over his shoulder at the lone potted palm in the shabby courtyard. He was about to knock again, when the door flew open and a fatman in BVD’s thrust a black revolver in the detective’s handsome face, motioned him into the shadowy interior of the blinds-drawn shack.
     “Now I hear you saying,” Art pocketed the money in his tight slacks, “why not just use bottled vinegar. Well, my dear Mr. Sain, you see the acetic acid the vinegaroons exude is both pure and organic. Totally. Who knows what additives in the Heinz 57? The roons cost me a sum; like I think five bucks apiece down at that pet store up on Broadway… can’t remember exactly… but the high-grade heroin they are more than likely to produce will totally justify the layout.”
     “Yuh.”
     Zimbalist did some tricky footwork. Knocked the fatso to the floor. Got possession of the gun. Wiped persp off his lips with the back of his hand, as the fatso winced, peering up beaten-dog style.
     “And now I hear you saying – where’s the stuff, Art! OK, I’ll get it.” Cut to Kookie, who seemed to be working undercover on the case, knocking on the door of an even more rundown bungalow, apparently fronting on the same courtyard. “It’s in the other room. Tell me if this is the one where Kookie gets winged in the shoulder, OK? I totally love it when one of these pigs gets shot.” Art stood. Walked backwards away from the screen. Slipped into his bedroom, partitioned to the immediate right of the bathroom.
     Gerald Lloyd Kookson III, played by I forget his name, drew a pistol from under his windbreaker. Showed a teen idol profile. Flashed the Elvis sneer (toned down to standard tv cutesie) and entered the residence. Today Kookie would be a few years older than Greg. Now no longer a television artist – if he’s even still alive – he managing a building somewhere, maybe a clump of bungalows?
     “Here!” Art strode back into the room, tossed a ziplock of white powder into my lap, collapsed back into his orange bucket, still without giving me a glance. “Enjoy!”
     I liked he avoided my face. Meant the alexithymia was working. It was a work of art – the way I faked this deadly nut look. Unless, of course, I really was…
     Jumped up, clutching ziplock. Stormed out. Behind, in all likelihood from the giant television, rang out two shots.
     Rambo grunted. I slammed the door. Sprinted down the single flight of stairs into the basement.