Алистер Маклин - Goodbye California

The singularly ill-named Café Cleopatra was a watering hole of unmatched dinginess, but on that hectic, frenetic and stifling evening it possessed the singular charm of being the only such establishment open in the blocks around Sassoon’s office. There were dozens of others but their doors were rigorously barred by proprietors who, when the opportunity was open to them, were lugging their dearest possessions to higher levels or who, when such opportunity was denied them, had already joined the panic-stricken rush to the hills.

Fear was abroad that evening but the rush was purely in the mind and heart: it was not physical, for the cars and people who jammed the street were almost entirely static. It was an evening for selfishness, ill-temper, envy, argument, and antisocial behaviour ranging from the curmudgeonly to the downright bellicose: phlegmatic the citizens of the Queen of the Coast were not.

It was an evening for those who ranged the nether scale from the ill-intentioned to the criminally inclined as they displayed in various measure that sweet concern, Christian charity and brotherly love for their fellow man in the hour of crisis, by indulging in red-faced altercation, splendidly uninhibited swearing, bouts of fisticuffs, purse-snatching, wallet-removal, mugging and kicking in the plate-glass windows of the more prosperous-looking emporiums. They were free to indulge their peccadilloes unhindered: the police were powerless as they, too, were immobilized. It was a night for pyromaniacs as many small fires had broken out throughout the city – although, in fairness, many of those were caused by unseemly speed of the departure of householders who left on cookers, ovens and heating appliances: again, the fire brigades were powerless, their only consolation being the faint hope that significant numbers of the smaller conflagrations would be abruptly extinguished at ten o’clock the following morning. It was not a night for the sick and the infirm: elderly ladies, widows and orphans were crushed against walls or, more commonly, deposited in unbecoming positions in the gutter as their fitter brethren pressed on eagerly for the high land: unfortunates in wheelchairs knew what it was to share the emotions of the charioteer who observes his inner wheel coming adrift as he rounds the first bend of the Circus Maximus: especially distressing was the case of thoughtless pedestrians knocked down by cars, driven by owners concerned only by the welfare of their family, and which mounted the pavement in order to overtake the less enterprising who elected to remain on the highway: where they fell there they remained, for doctors and ambulances were as helpless as any. It was hardly an edifying spectacle

Ryder surveyed the scene with a jaundiced and justifiably misanthropic eye although, in truth, he had been in a particularly ill humour even before arriving to sample the sybaritic pleasures of the Café Cleopatra. In the group’s return from CalTech he had listened to, without participating in, the endless wrangling as to how best they should counter and hopefully terminate the evil machinations of Morro and his Muslims: finally, in frustration and disgust, he had announced that he would return within the hour and had left with Jeff and Parker There had been no attempt to dissuade him: there was something about Ryder, as Barrow, Mitchell and their associates had come to appreciate in a very brief period of time, that precluded the idea of dissuasion; besides, he owed neither allegiance nor obedience to any man.

‘Cattle,’ Luigi said with a splendid contempt. He had just brought fresh beers to the three men and was now surveying the pandemoniac scenes being enacted beyond his unwashed windows. Luigi, the proprietor, regarded himself as a cosmopolitan par excellence in a city of cosmopolitans. Neopolitan by birth, he claimed to be a Greek and did his undistinguished best to run what he regarded as an Egyptian establishment. From his slurred speech and unsteady gait it was clear that he had been his own best customer for the day. ‘Canaille!’ His few words of French served, as he fondly imagined, to enhance his cosmopolitan aura. ‘All for one and one for all. The spirit that won the west! How true. The California gold rush, the Klondyke. Every man for himself and the devil take the rest. Alas, I fear they lack the Athenian spirit.’ He swung a dramatic arm around him and almost fell over in the process. ‘Today, this beautiful establishment: tomorrow, the deluge And Luigi? Luigi laughs at the gods, for they are but manikins that masquerade as gods else they would not permit this catastrophe to overtake those mindless infants.’ He paused and reflected. ‘My ancestors fought at Thermopylae.’ Overcome by his own eloquence and the alcohol-accentuated effects of gravity, Luigi collapsed into the nearest chair.

Ryder looked around at the incredible dilapidation which was the outstanding characteristic of Luigi’s beautiful establishment, at the vanished patterns on the cracked linoleum, the stained Formica table-tops, the aged infirmity of the bent-wood chairs, the unwashed stuccoed walls behung with sepia daguerrotypes of pharaonic profiled bas-reliefs, each with two eyes on the same side of the face, portraits of so unbelievable an awfulness that the only charitable thing that could be said about them was that they tended to restore to a state of almost pristine purity the unlovely walls which they desecrated. He said: ‘Your sentiments do you great credit, Luigi. This country could do with more men like you. Now, please, may we be left alone? We have important matters to discuss.’

They had, indeed, important matters to discuss, and their discussion led to a large and uncompromising zero. The problems of what to do with the apparently unassailable inhabitants of the Adlerheim seemed insuperable. In point of fact, the discussion was a dialogue between Ryder and Parker, for Jeff took no part in it. He just leaned back, his beer untouched, his eyes closed as if he were fast asleep or he had lost all interest in solving the unsolvable. He appeared to subscribe to the dictum laid down by the astronomer J. Allen Hynek: ‘In science it’s against the rules to ask questions when we have no way of approaching the answers.’ The problem on hand was not a scientific one: but the principle appeared to be the same.

Unexpectedly, Jeff stirred and said: ‘Good old Luigi.’

‘What?’ Parker stared at him. ‘What’s that?’

‘And Hollywood only a five-minute hop from here.’

Ryder said carefully: ‘Look, Jeff, I know you’ve been through a hard time. We’ve all been through–’

‘Dad?’

‘What?’

‘I have it. Manikins masquerading as gods.’

Five minutes later Ryder was on his third beer, but this time back in Sassoon’s office. The other nine men were still there and had indeed not stirred since Ryder, Jeff and Parker had left. The air was full of tobacco smoke, the powerful aroma of Scotch and, most disquietingly, an almost palpable aura of defeat.

Ryder said: ‘The scheme we have to propose is a highly dangerous one. It verges on the desperate, but there are degrees of desperation and it’s by no means as desperate as the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Success or failure depends entirely on the degree of co-operation we receive from every person in this nation whose duty is in any way concerned with the enforcement of the law, those not concerned directly with the law, even those, if need be, outside the law.’ He looked in turn at Barrow and Mitchell. ‘It’s of no consequence, gentlemen, but your jobs are on the line.’

Barrow said: ‘Let’s have it.’

‘My son will explain it to you. It is entirely his brainchild.’ Ryder smiled faintly. ‘To save you gentlemen any cerebral stress, he even has all the details worked out.’