California Girl

23

NICK AND LOBDELL walked into Mystic Arts World in Laguna that evening around five. The flyers around town had said that Dr. Timothy Leary would give a brief talk on “Coming Together in the Psychedelic Age.”

The store was larger than it looked from the street. Two entrances and three long sections, and a meditation room in the back. Wild paintings on the walls. Drug paraphernalia, candles, incense and incense holders, brass gewgaws made in China and Turkey and India, odd percussion instruments, sandals and tie-dyed clothing, books on mysticism, psychopharmacology, Oriental religion, tantric and meditational texts, ancient Persian erotica, health foods, an endless selection of Turkish tobacco and clove cigarettes, eight-track tapes of “mystical” music, some of which-a sitar, Nick was pretty sure-boinged and plinked from speakers mounted to the walls on either side of a poster that said “Om Sweet Om.”

“It’s like a Sears for heads,” said Nick.

“I got my sofa from Sears. Don’t squirt any air freshener on yourself, Nicky.”

Nick inhaled the marvelously competing smells: clove and cinnamon, bay leaves and herbal teas, oils for the skin, genitals, hair. He picked up a comic book by R. Crumb. The characters looked harmlessly deranged. Then a book called the I Ching, not an autobiography of a person named Ching but a collection of oddly pithy sayings:

Thus the superior man

Takes thought of misfortune

And arms himself against it in advance.

Then a copy of The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Nick fanned through the mysterious hieroglyphics and read a translation:

I am pure, I am divine, I am might, I have a soul, I have become powerful,

I am glorious, I have brought to you perfume [and] incense [and] natron.

Ronnie Joe Fowler took one look at them and said, “Hey, everybody, the pigs are here.”

“Yeah, we came to talk about your rape charges in Oregon,” said Lobdell.

“Plenty of charges but no crime,” said Fowler. Stocky and strong. Black hair to his shoulders. “Dismissed for lack of evidence.”

“We came for the program,” said Nick.

“Pigs aren’t welcome,” said Fowler.

A man in a loose white shirt and pants stepped in front of Fowler. Offered his hand to Nick. “And why not? It’s all God’s flesh. Hello, gentlemen, I’m Tim.”

Leary was tanned and handsome. Taller and older than Nick had expected. Sun-bleached hair, broad face. An engaging twinkle in his eyes.

Nick shook Leary’s hand but Lobdell turned down the offer.

“We want to turn on, tune in, and drop out,” said Lobdell.

Leary looked at him and laughed. White teeth. Merry eyes. “That’s entirely up to you. You know, my yippie friends in the cities have changed that to ‘turn on, tune in, and kick ass.’”

“I’m not raising my son to turn on,” said Lobdell. “What kind of advice is that to give young people?”

“We don’t give advice to children or anybody else,” said Fowler. “We want people to think for themselves.”

“You’re welcome to stay for the program,” said Leary. “In spite of Ronnie’s bad manners. Right, Ron?”

“Sure. Maybe they’ll learn something.”

“We’d like to learn something about Janelle Vonn,” said Nick.

“I don’t know shit about her,” said Fowler.

“I remember her very clearly,” said Leary. “She had a beauty like my wife, Rosemary. Janelle was so vibrant and alive. She was a piece of God walking on earth. Her energies were shaped like this-”

Leary raised both arms into a V, hands open and fingers spread. “See? It’s a bodily representation of the hexagram for peace, or tai. Receptive above, moving down. Creative below, moving up. It’s the very first hexagram in the I Ching and I recognized it in Janelle immediately.”

“We found some of your LSD in her car,” said Nick.

“My LSD?”

“The Orange Sunshine air freshener.”

“Now, I’ve heard of such a thing,” said Leary. “But I’ve never actually seen one.”

“Maybe you’ll talk to us after the show tonight,” said Lobdell.

“I’ll do anything I can to help you.”

“The pigs will stab you in the back, man,” said Fowler. “Don’t forget your pig friends in Texas.”

Lobdell looked down at Fowler. Nick felt the violence quotient spike inside Mystic Arts World. Unlike Jonas Dessinger, who was too naive to recognize danger, Ronnie Joe Fowler read it loud and clear.

“I’m cool,” he said, hands out and palms up, backing past a rack of Afghani clothing.

“We want to talk to you, too,” said Nick.

“Hey, I’m cool, man. I ain’t going nowhere.” Fowler turned and headed for the back room.

“Pardon me, gentlemen,” said Leary. “I have some consciousness to expand.”

THE MEDITATION ROOM was big enough for forty standing people and it was almost full. Nick and Lobdell stayed in the back, their coats and ties freakish amid the robes and jeans and tie-dyes and batik prints and muslin. There was a narrow table at the front of the room. A brass holder and a smoking stick of incense sat on one end of it. Leary sat near the other.

“Shoulda worn my sandals,” said Lobdell. “Cost Shirley eight and a half books of Green Stamps.”

Nick said nothing. He was studying the painting on the wall behind the table, a huge canvas shaped like a diamond with the evolution of life portrayed. It went from amoebas to God in an explosion of color and detail that challenged Nick’s eyes. He didn’t know anything about painting a picture, but it seemed like this must have taken a few thousand hours.

“Thing makes me dizzy,” said Lobdell.

“I kind of like it,” said Nick.

“Too much Orange Sunshine for you.”

A small woman with big hair looked at Nick and smiled. “Far out,” she said. “Even the cops are droppin’. I dropped last Monday and didn’t come down till Wednesday.”

“Sure you’re not still floating around up there?” asked Lobdell.

“No, I’m back to earth. It’s always nice to come home.”

“I took it by accident,” said Nick. “It was wild, but in the morning I felt pretty good.”

“Try smoking some dragon ball when you’re tripping,” she said. “The hash and opium mellow you out while the acid blows your mind.”

“I’ll think about that,” said Nick.

The woman trailed him a smile as she moved closer to the front of the room. Nick and Lobdell stayed in the back, quarantined by wing tips and hidden guns.

A slender young man approached them. Hair in a ponytail, jeans and a loose woven shirt. Clear eyes, strong chin.

“I knew Janelle,” he said. “I don’t know anything about what happened but I’ll help in any way I can.”

“Are you Brotherhood?” asked Nick.

“One of the original thirty. Richard Lucas. She was a very gentle girl. Terrific energy and curiosity. Used too much acid, if you ask me.”

“I thought that’s what you guys did,” said Lobdell.

A neutral look from Lucas. He considered the crowd. Then Tim Leary making his way through it. “We used to create space for light and vision. I’m not sure what we’re doing now. You can contact me here anytime you want.”

“When did you see her last?” asked Nick.

“The day she died,” said Lucas. “Late morning. She came into the store here and bought some incense. Patchouli.”

“Was she worried or anxious?”

Lucas smiled. Brightness in his eyes. “She seemed calm and happy like she always did. The world is a slightly darker place without her in it. Excuse me. I’m needed up front. Come by again if you want to talk more. The Brotherhood is misunderstood. We do good things. We’ve helped a lot of people.”

Suddenly the room was buzzing with the syllable om. Leary now sat on the table cross-legged, fingers circled on his knees, smiling. “I can’t say om and smile, but I can’t keep from smiling! I confess! I’m a hope fiend!”

After a few minutes the chanting subsided and Leary’s voice took over the room. For the next twenty minutes he talked about the psychedelic experience opening the doors of perception and the psychopharmacologic evolution/revolution that was taking place in the world and how Ginsberg was right, what the world needs is Johnson and Nikita and Mao and Ho and Kerouac and Burroughs and Mailer to all get together and drop heavy psychedelics and figure out a new holy apostolic method to strip the hate from the chromosomes of human experience and replace it with a little…illumination so the strings of the cosmos can vibrate in peace instead of madness!

“And I thought my kids had imaginations,” whispered Nick.

I don’t sense that we are alone here. The quest for internal freedom, for the elixir of life, for the draft of immortal revelation, isn’t new. I believe we are unwitting agents of a social process far too powerful for us to control or more than dimly understand. A historical movement that will inevitably change man at the very center of his nature, his consciousness.

“He’s a lunatic with a big vocabulary,” Lobdell whispered.

“I don’t think he’s crazy,” Nick whispered back. “It’s belief. Fervor. Passion. He believes what he’s saying.”

“You just like his air freshener.”

After half an hour of hopeful sermonizing, Leary invited everyone across the street to the beach for sunset and chanting.

They crossed Coast Highway at the signal and weaved down the sidewalk at Cleo Street. Nick and Lobdell brought up the rear. Up ahead Nick spotted Ronnie Joe Fowler and Troy Gant. They looked back at the same time, made the cops. Then both looked to their left and ahead, where Janelle Vonn’s yellow cottage sat overlooking the ocean.

Nick felt the sand crunching under his shoes as he walked down the concrete steps to the beach. The sun burned down in an orange pool. Catalina Island sat in it like a black rock. Nick glanced straight up to a sky of weightless blue with one star already twinkling.

Fowler and Gant stood on a flat rock staring down at them. Fowler smiled and waved. Leary stood knee deep in the ocean, arms raised toward the setting sun. Some of the crowd joined him, others stayed on the wet bank of sand. More spread back into the sandstone and the seawall and Nick heard the communal syllable om again. A flock of seagulls cried overhead, dove through the air toward Leary, then straightened and glided out over the water by inches. A few minutes later the cool October night turned dark and Nick saw the flames of lighters and matches. The air around them filled with the sweet reek of clove and tobacco and marijuana.

“Like cocktail hour,” said Lobdell. “Except you don’t drink it, you smoke it.”

LATER WHEN the crowd drifted away they got Leary and Fowler off alone.

They walked north along the waterline. “We-Rosemary and I-had Janelle to the house I think three times,” Leary said. “Just casual get-togethers.”

“We heard they were be-ins,” said Nick.

“Exactly,” said Leary. “Be-ins. Be in yourself. Be in the moment. Be in harmony with nature and those around you.”

“Clever,” said Lobdell. “Janelle ever have any trouble at these orgies?”

“None,” said Leary. “She was perfect.”

“She was nineteen is what she was,” said Nick.

“And there was very little if any orgiastic behavior at those gatherings,” said Leary.

“Did you give her drugs?” asked Lobdell.

“No. But I shared with her what I believe about LSD. How it will open the windows of the mind and the doors of perception. I think it’s the most important chemical tool we have for helping society. I make no secret about what I believe, gentlemen. But I don’t supply LSD to nineteen-year-old girls.”

“The air freshener acid was powerful,” said Nick. “I got some on me by accident.”

“And what did you see?”

“More than was really there.”

“What you saw is always there, Detective Becker! It was you who arrived fresh and new!”

Leary had produced a flashlight. Nick watched the beam flicker along on the sand. To his right were the Laguna boardwalk and the old lifeguard tower. Beyond that Coast Highway and the Star Theater. They moved north away from the lights and into the darkness.

“You ever see anybody bothering her?” asked Nick.

“Men were attracted to her,” said Leary.

“What about Cory Bonnett?” asked Nick.

“Guy’s a nutcase,” said Fowler. “I can’t even be in the same room with that creep.”

“He’d kick your fake hippie ass,” said Lobdell.

“Cory is a man headed for trouble,” said Leary.

The sand gave way to rocks. Leary and Fowler seemed to glide across them. Nick steadied himself, picking his way. In the faint moonlight it was hard to see the cracks and holes. The air had the tide-pool smell of ocean and of seaweed beginning to spoil.

“Janelle was working for the Sheriff’s Department,” said Nick. “As an informant. We didn’t find that out until after she was murdered.”

“I never trusted her,” said Fowler. “Didn’t I tell you, Tim? Didn’t I make her for a snitch right out?”

“Yes,” said Leary softly. He sounded genuinely disappointed. “You did.”

“So,” said Nick. “We thought if some genius like Fowler here figured that out, maybe that’s a reason to shut her up. That’s the kind of possibility that interests us.”

“I never touched her,” said Fowler. “I got no interest in chicks that think they know everything. I crashed with some friends that night out in Dodge City. I’ll give you numbers. You can ask them. I don’t give a shit what you think.”

Leary stood on the rocks. White shirt and pants flapping in the stiff coast breeze. Nick felt the soles of his wing tips growing slick from the brine. Could use some sandals with tire-rubber soles like the hippies, he thought. A wave rushed across the rocks. Soaked him halfway up his calves.

“This world is full of experience,” said Leary. “And the temptation of experience.”

“You and your drugs are temptation,” said Nick.

“But they’re not my drugs and they haven’t killed anyone.”

“There’s that lady who jumped out of the skyscraper,” said Lobdell.

“She was under psychiatric treatment,” said Leary. “LSD should probably not be prescribed for a potential suicide.”

“Your first wife killed herself,” said Lobdell.

“Yes. God bless her.”

Fowler had jumped up onto the rocks. Nimble for a thick strong man. Whispered something in Leary’s ear, then laughed.

“Dr. Leary, where were you on Tuesday night, October first?” asked Nick.

Leary looked at him but said nothing for a long moment. “With my wife Rosemary and my son Jack. We ate at a Chinese restaurant downtown. That’s a nasty insinuation you just made, if you’re considering me a suspect.”

Leary aimed the flashlight at himself. The light turned his flesh pale red and cast shadows upward on his face. Weird guy, thought Nick. Figured Leary had spent more days frying on LSD than he had spent on the job as a homicide detective.

“Where I’m standing right now is called the Giggle Crack,” said Leary. He aimed the light down on the shiny black rocks. “See the crack, where the water comes in and flows out? In daylight it’s really quite beautiful. People like to see if they can get in, feel the tide swell around them. But there’s a sharp edge they don’t see and it snags their ankles and the water beats them terribly against the sharp rocks. The Giggle Crack has killed three people. Every ten years it claims a new victim. There it is again-the temptation of experience.”

“Someone raped and strangled Janelle,” said Nick. “It wasn’t temptation that did that.”

Leary shined the flashlight on Nick’s face, then tilted it back at himself. “Is this more to you than a case, Mr. Becker?”

“I knew her when she was a little girl,” said Nick. “She used to sing and dance.”

“I’m sure she was perfect in every way,” said Leary. “I’m sorry I can’t help you more. Goodbye. There’s a trail to your right that leads up the bluff. It’s easy to follow. There are feral cats in the brush. Their eyes glow faint yellow in the dark. They’ll lead your way. Good night, gentlemen.”

Fowler handed Nick a piece of paper. “My alibis. Check ’em all you want.”

They drifted away. Nick could see Leary’s white clothes slowly vanish.

Nick and Lobdell climbed up the trail on the bluff, yellow cat eyes paired in the brush around them.