Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers

It was a nice day for bodies. There was a sensual anticipation about, an assurance of marvels shortly to be manifest. Marge, deluded, sniffed at it with everyone else.

“It must have been a paradise here once,” she told Hicks as they finished their coffee.” If only they’d left it.”

Hicks said he had the L.A. blues.

They were going to see Eddie Peace. If anyone could move weight, Hicks said, Eddie Peace could.

His house was in a cul-de-sac up Laurel Canyon. There were three cars parked in the cobbled driveway in front of it — a Bentley limousine with fresh soldering on the chassis, a dusty Maserati, and a Volkswagen sedan. Hicks parked his car uphill from the Volkswagen and they walked to the Spanish double doors.

Hicks paused before ringing the bell; there was some disturbance of women inside. A lady was shouting in Spanish and a second in English. The Spanish-speaking lady was the more audible.

“ Puta !” she shouted. “ Puta ! Puta !” And they heard a door slam inside. Hicks sounded the musical bells.

A small woman in large round sunglasses observed them from behind a length of chain.

“Hello?” she asked, as though she were answering the phone.

“My name’s Ray,” Hicks said. “I’m an old friend of Eddie’s. This is Marge.” Marge had been smiling all the way up the canyon.

She looked at them both by turns.

“ Puta !” someone cried from inside.

“Where do you know Eddie from?”

“From Malibu,” Hicks said.

The lady removed her sunglasses; her eyes were dull with fear.

“C’mon, Lois,” Hicks said, “for Christ’s sake.”

“I don’t remember you,” Lois said. But she opened the door.

They entered a large white room with a glass partition at one end which was open to a sundeck. From an unseen room came another explosion of shrill Hispanic rage.

“Shut up,” Lois shouted — quite coarsely, Marge thought “Shut up already!”

A baby began to cry. Marge turned quickly toward the sound.

“It’s one of those days,” Lois said. “I’m firing the cleaning woman.”

Hicks nodded sympathetically.

“She speak English?”

Lois shrugged. “Sure.”

A young Mexican girl came into the room, bared her teeth and gave them all the finger. She was wearing a pink imitation leather jacket with zippered pockets.

“Wow,” she told them, “you some boss clique.” She went out laughing unpleasantly. The baby, wherever it was, cried louder.

“Nuts,” Lois said, “you know! A juvenile delinquent.” She was looking about the room as though for solace. “She’ll come back with her boyfriend and rip the place off.”

They inspected an enormous painting above the fire place. It was a portrait of a clown with a tragic expression. Half-inch acrylic tears ran down the clown’s rouged cheeks.

“Do you like it?” Lois asked faintly. “Some people don’t like it.” She began to seem alarmed. “But I like it. I think it’s Eddie.”

“Eddie all the way,” Hicks said. He walked to the partition and looked out over the sundeck. “Is he around?”

“He’s working.” She watched Hicks without hope. “What did you say your name was? Like I don’t remember you.”

“Ray. From Malibu. Where’s he working?”

“He’s never in Malibu anymore,” Lois said. “His Malibu period is over.”

“Where can I get in touch with him?” From the sundeck one could see a hillside with growths of ponderosa and scores of sparkling amorphous swimming pools. No one was swimming.

“At Famous.” Lois said. “He’s working all day.”

Hicks went to the phone and picked it up.

“May I?”

Lois made a small feathering gesture with her hand and stamped her heel silently. He replaced the phone. “He won’t want to hear from you. He’s had it with Malibu.”

“This is not harassment,” Hicks explained. “This is something of interest to him.”

“No, it isn’t,” Lois said.

Hicks smiled and picked up the phone again. “What’s the matter with her?” Marge asked. She meant the baby. “Or him. Can I help you?”

Lois ignored her, watching Hicks dial Information.

“He’s not there.”

Hicks stared at her.

“It’s none of my business,” he said, “but if I know Eddie he’ll be really pissed off if we miss each other. We’re passing through in sort of a rush.”

Lois stood silent for a moment and then hurried out.

Marge sat down and leaned her head on her palm, hoping that the baby would stop crying soon.

“Jesus, what an ugly room,” she said. “What an ugly picture.”

Hicks shrugged.

“We’re making all the rooms,” he said, sitting beside Marge. “Checking them out.”

“Right,” Marge said, closing her eyes and leaning on his shoulder. “We’re passing through in sort of a rush.”

When Lois came back the baby had stopped crying.

“Where is she?” Marge asked. “Didn’t you pick her up?”

Lois looked at her in loathing.

“I’m sorry,” Marge said. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“I do,” Lois said.

Hicks cleared his throat.

“About Eddie…”

“He’s in Gardena.” She sounded bitter and weary. “They’re shooting at the Gardena Auditorium and that’s where he is. You can wait down there till he’s finished.”

“One thing,” Hicks said. “We’d like to use the shower, if that’s all right.”

“Oh, sure,” Lois said disgustedly. “Anything you want.”

Hicks brought some fresh clothes in from the car and they showered in turns. They were very careful to keep the turquoise-colored bathroom dry; they rinsed the shower stall when they were through and put their used towels in a hamper.

Lois was not to be seen as they left, and the baby was quiet.

Before they got into the car again, Hicks took out his knife and pried a Dizzy Gillespie for President sticker off their rear bumper. It had been there for years.

They rode the freeways to Gardena and cruised about to find the auditorium. The streets were dead straight, and the houses were not very large but most of them had little searchlights on their lawns for nightly illumination. There were a lot of poker joints on the business blocks.

Gardena Auditorium was a stucco building adjoining a park, built to resemble Union Station in miniature. Two huge generator trucks were parked in front of the ticket-holders’ gate.

They had no difficulty getting inside. Wandering across the lobby, they came on a large tiled space surrounded by tiers of benches. In one of the tiers a glum crowd of sixty or so well-dressed people sat listening to a man with a megaphone.

“We want you to cheer, gang,” the man with the mega phone was saying. “Please don’t groan or scream. If you want to scream, do it outside in the street.”

A boxing ring and its draped platform had been hauled to the wall opposite the occuped tier. People in bright casual clothes sauntered about and lounged on the empty benches. In the center of the space where the boxing ring should have been, there were two camera cranes with technicians standing beside them. At the far end of the place was a table with stacks of what appeared to be box lunches and, beside that, a partitioned area where there were lighted mirrors and barber chairs. Four or five trailers were lined up beside the doors to the lobby.

“Stand by, gang,” the man with the megaphone called.

Marge and Hicks walked closer to the crowd.

The man with the megaphone was watching a small sour-looking man who sat in a canvas chair behind him reading the Daily Variety. After a moment or so the small man looked up from his magazine, flung a hand toward the seated crowd, and returned his attention to the page.