The Influence

Chapter 10 of the science fiction crime thriller Freak

Freak

Chapter Ten

The Influence

The Dunerider Hotel on Ocean Avenue features a breathtaking panorama of Venice Beach and the Pacific, a view made all the more enchanting by a killer sunset in a cloudless sky. Set in a wide wrought iron archway inlaid with polished turquoise, a cursive neon vacancy sign offers CABLE and SATELLITE and FRESH SEAFOOD DINING. It’s no dive. When head of security saw the strangely familiar-looking man approach the main desk escorting a lovely, distant young woman, a thousand bells went off in his naturally suspicious mind. But when the newcomer caught him in those pale gray eyes he was immediately inspired to shut down all security cameras and erase their tapes. He vanished through a small back door hidden by potted dwarf palms.

The desk clerk’s eyes were on his ledger. Vilenov leaned tipsily against the desk and smiled warmly. “Your finest room, my man, with all the goodies.”

The clerk’s eyes, slithering across the desk, went foggy at the contents of the straining fuzzy sweater. His voice caught in his throat.

“Your wife?”

“You bet.”

He looked enviously into the face of the hotel’s newest customer. That envy was instantly removed from his expression, as though he’d been slapped. Every aspect of his tone and manner became respectfully businesslike.

“Will you be staying long, sir?”

“Just the night.”

“Fine. I’ll need to see some identification, please.”

Vilenov grunted and thrust the brandy bottle under the man’s nose so that his eyes were fixed on the label. The clerk dutifully scribbled in his ledger, saying, “Thank you, Mr. Walker.” He reached below the counter to extract a single key on a ring. “I’m giving you number 4, our best available room. It’s downstairs, and has a rear balcony with a stunning ocean view. In the room you will find a menu, a widescreen TV with cable and satellite, and a brochure describing all our amenities and how you may access them with a simple phone call. If there’s anything you need, or if you find anything unsatisfactory in any way, please just ring the desk and ask for the manager. Now, will you be paying in cash or by credit card?”

“Whatever,” Vilenov said.

“Excellent. If you’ll just sign the register, then.”

Vilenov, leaning heavily on the desk, signed clumsily:

Hiram Walker

He pinched the bottle’s neck with one hand and plucked the key from the clerk’s fingers with the other, killed the brandy and tossed the empty bottle on the ledger. “You can start your room service with another one of these. And bring some ice, and some fresh underthings for the lady. And after that you can stay the hell away from my door.”

* * *

It was late afternoon when he surfaced from a nightmare of rampaging pigs in jackboots. Never had he felt so sick. His head pounded as he rose, softened when he paused. Fighting to keep from vomiting, Vilenov forced himself to a sitting position little by little. He slid off the toppled, stained mattress, landing directly on his tailbone.

The room was a disaster. Liquor bottles, full and empty, lay scattered on the plush pile carpet. One curtain was half-torn from its rod. A wedge of sunlight tore at his eyes while he sat in a slump, nursing fractured memories of waking at dawn, of getting drunk again, of repeatedly assaulting the woman beside him with varying results. That was the rub of alcohol. Fires you up but lets you down.

He staggered into the bathroom, pitched back out and fumbled into his clothes, took two steps and collapsed on his knees. Cindy was supine; her face turned away, her fine brown hair spilt all around the pillow in a soft feathered fan. She couldn’t have looked lovelier posing. Her breasts made the sheet a taut slope from n*****s to thighs. He took a peek and shuddered. It was enough to make a man’s man cry. She was a keeper, no doubt about it.

Vilenov had to walk on his knees to fix the curtain; if he’d tried to stand he would have passed right out. Halfway to the window he became aware of authoritative-sounding voices in the parking lot. He tentatively stuck his head into the wedge of light. What he saw sobered him instantly.

Five black-and-whites had control of the hotel’s drive. Four others were barricading the street. Two units down, officers were moving door to door with guns drawn. At least three more were creeping through the parking lot, crouching and rising, peeking inside vehicles. Vilenov couldn’t check himself: he slammed his fist into the wall.

Immediately one of the officers moving door to door went rigid, whirled, and threw a haymaker into the teeth of his partner. Within seconds there was a policeman’s brawl in the parking lot. The first cop, swarmed by his buddies, went for his gun. Vilenov heard a shot. Then another. Tenants and staff ran screaming from the lobby while hunching pedestrians scattered behind anything stationary. In the confusion he stumbled into his boots, slipped outside, and ran zigzagging between cars. He hesitated, his temple pounding as hard as his heart. To his right, a picturesque cement staircase descended in sections street to street, terminating in a brief splash of cobblestones at Ocean Front Walk three flights below. Chain link separates this staircase from the Dunerider and adjacent property, but Vilenov couldn’t afford to run clear up to the street and around, so he jumped on a car and vaulted the fence. No athlete, he tore his arm and trousers going over, then half ran, half rolled down the stairs to the promenade.

Ocean Front Walk, on a beautiful late summer’s day, is an outrageous freak show all wound up with no place to go. Thousands of rowdy partygoers file along in rough ranks on a sidewalk two miles long and ten feet wide, occasionally obstructed by vendors, street musicians, and milling gangbangers. Vilenov was carried by the crowd; jostled by roller-skating blacks in Speedos, by glaring Latino furheads grudgingly comparing tattoos, by creepy white longhairs slinking across the walk to dig in ranks of fifty-five gallon trash drums. Sifting through all this were the camera-toting tourists, the beady-eyed skinheads, the glistening, overblown bodybuilders. Two helicopters appeared above the Dunerider. Another--sleek, black, and futuristic--tore south along the waterline at full tilt. Following with his eyes, Vilenov made out a number of distant police ATVs speeding his way over the sand. Closer by, lifeguards were clearing the beach of sunbathers. Vilenov pushed through the bodies, keeping low. Catching a break, he looked north to find Santa Monica Pier’s paved boardwalk crawling with police cars. He was about to change direction when he heard the whoop of a siren behind him being triggered and released. The crowd ahead, whirling to see, instantly became an impenetrable human wall. Above their bobbing heads appeared the eggshell helmet of a mounted policeman.

The wall exploded the moment Vilenov panicked. A spike-haired youth beside him grabbed a man twice his size and went for his eyes. A pretty brown girl fell to her knees, screaming and tearing at her cheeks with her long purple nails. A table covered with specimens of Henna tattoos collapsed as if its legs had been kicked out. A homeless man knocked over the trash can he’d been dredging, then pursued the rolling can through the bewildered crowd, kicking and cursing all the way.

Now Vilenov, rammed from behind, turned to see the mêlée expanding like ripples in a pond. He staggered onto one of the little grass oases between the walk and adjacent serpentine bike path. The oasis was peppered by bicyclists dazed from collisions. Vilenov snatched the derailleur of a spandexed bicyclist sitting holding his gushing broken nose. The handlebars, wrenched left in the spill, wouldn’t respond to his immediate attempts at adjustment, so he rode wobbling along the path towards the waterline, occasionally looking back.

The Ocean Front crowd, spilling onto the bike path and beach itself, was immediately corralled by dozens of plain-clothes officers leaping from behind kiosks and storefront countertops. Suddenly men with megaphones were everywhere. Vilenov saw ATVs making for the spot he’d just left, even as an unmarked car, its siren briefly howling every few seconds, lurched around frantic pedestrians. Before it had stopped completely a number of men jumped out and threw themselves into the shoving bodies, abandoning the car in the sand. Two sprinted into one of the many collapsible leased stores selling sunglasses and pop posters, chasing a man wearing a red bandana and baseball cap. Another helicopter appeared, this time very low over Ocean Front. The crowd went right into stampede mode.

He was breathing hard by the time he reached the short pier tunnel. Emerging cyclists, reacting to his anxiety, threw out their arms and pitched headfirst onto the asphalt path. Vilenov dropped his wheels. Clinging to the darkness, he crept like a spider to the bright world on the other side.

He poked out his head. Despite the very heavy police presence behind him, the beach on this side was still crowded, cut off from the sounds of panic.

Then sun worshippers were jumping up and plodding excitedly through the sand to Ocean Front. A knot of running pedestrians erupted into view. Seconds later a trio of police cars came pushing south from Ocean Front’s far end, quickly overtaken by ATVs that leaped the road and tore across the sand. The slower sunbathers, looking around uncertainly, hollered questions, grabbed belongings, and scooped up errant toddlers.

Vilenov arched his shoulders and lowered his head. Melting out of the pier’s shadow, he walked nonchalantly round a pillar and straight into a fine hail of pepper spray.

He hit the ground with his hands clamped over his face; his eyes, sinuses, and throat on fire. Cayenne seared his lungs in brief, superheated bursts, remedied only by desperate little gulps of fresh ocean air. He thrashed about like a drowning man before pushing himself to his knees, his hot red face hanging beneath a high-pitched pumping noise. Vilenov wiped his streaming eyes and smacked his palms over his ears before that piercing, persistent screech could drill a hole right through the soft spot in his temple. Planted squarely in front of him, the offending blur swam into focus.

A squat, middle-aged woman in windbreaker and jogging sweats stood hunched with her fists on her hips, blowing frantically on a fat nickel-plated whistle. By alternately rubbing his eyes and rapidly blinking, Vilenov was able to make out the oval santa monica provisional deputy patch on the woman’s black baseball cap, and the all-pervading anti-Vilenov image sewn into her windbreaker’s breast.

“Gah!” he snarled, and she took off like a shot across the sand, still blowing her whistle maniacally. Not a soul paid her the least mind; every person on the beach was mesmerized by the human flash flood screaming down Ocean Front. Slapping his face and howling curses, Vilenov staggered to a drinking fountain, rinsed his mouth and spat, soaked his head, repeatedly splashed water in his eyes. His expression was startlingly feral as he bounded up the short flight of sand-to-boardwalk cement steps.

Almost every officer on the pier was caught up in the Ocean Front commotion; Vilenov watched them leaning over the promenade rail, running through the hangar-like arcade, circumnavigating the carousel--but one nervous patrolman was parked facing the water, maybe a hundred feet from the cement staircase. This officer’s head popped out his window like a jack in the box, popped back inside. The cop stepped on the gas and made straight for him, their stares wed all the way. Suddenly the driver’s eyes seemed to sizzle in his face. Gunning the engine, he planted his head squarely into his shoulders. The car accelerated past Vilenov to the very end of the pier, burst through the rail and made a picture-perfect swan dive into the sea.

The police overlooking the promenade whirled when they heard the cruiser’s racing engine, then stood mesmerized as the car smashed into the wooden guardrail and appeared to hang suspended above the sea. Before it had vanished they were sprinting for the spot, the roar of their voices rolling up the boardwalk like a retreating wave. Vilenov took the steps back down three at a time. He stumbled through the sand to the Sidewalk Plaza, where pedestrians and customers greeted him with a rushing, shrieking free-for-all. He was battered and bitten, elbowed and kneed. Vilenov kicked and punched his way free while flags and sun umbrellas burst into flames around him. He scrambled crabwise up the embankment beneath the avenue-to-pier bridge.

Running under this bridge are the lanes connecting Pacific Coast Highway with the 10 freeway, and the onramp and offramp connecting PCH with Palisades Park, a famous cliff top swath with a breathtaking South Bay view. The two highway lanes lead into a short tunnel penetrating a low fat hillock at the cliff’s foot, and emerge as diverging lanes which are, practically speaking, the westbound 10’s terminus. Vilenov dashed across the ramps and paused on the dividing island to consider his three possible routes: he could dart in full sight across the highway to the base of the cliff, he could clamber up the tree-lined embankment over the tunnel until he reached the park, or he could sprint the few hundred yards through the tunnel out of view from above. Vilenov peered into the tunnel. That way was suicide. And a quick glance up revealed police cars moving off the bridge onto Pacific Avenue. No less than nine helicopters--police, news, and National Guard--were hovering about, a few positioned extremely high overhead. Hard to his left, a herd of black-and-whites were roaring up PCH. Without a moment to waste, he ran across the highway and began awkwardly making his way up the cliff’s face, embracing one clump of brush before leaping to the next. There was a sudden ruckus from joggers and seniors leaning on the rail above, and some very aggressive barking from a police K9 unit. Down on the highway, a dozen CHP cars halted in ranks of three. On the beach beyond, eight south-running black and white ATVs met an equal number driving north. The vehicles parked in an odd arrangement that placed drivers facing in all directions, leaving a maze of tire tracks in the sand. Hard on his tail, a number of policemen were now kicking down homeless camps amid the stunted trees over the tunnel. A black helicopter came barreling north, halted above the ATVs, and swung to face Vilenov like a toy on a wire. There was a fluttering roar over Palisades Park. The cliff seemed to tremble. Vilenov looked up and to his left.

Appearing to just clear the rail, a Los Angeles police helicopter loomed enormously. It very slowly turned to face the brush, its rotors creating flurries of leaves. An electronically magnified voice hit the cliff’s face like a fist.

“Anyone in the brush is ordered to pull his shirt over his head and crawl on hands and knees to the highway. Once there you are further ordered to lay face down and to not turn your head. If you do so you will be fired upon.”

In a minute a couple of transients came slithering onto the highway on their stomachs, shirts over their heads. Half a dozen CHP officers approached in crescent formation, their guns trained on the pair. A man in white shirt and tie stepped through as soon as the two had been pinned by their necks and backs. This officer kicked the derelicts repeatedly, then grabbed a man by the hair and slowly turned his head while holding a massive handgun to the temple. He repeated the process with the second man. After a tense minute he looked up and shook his head emphatically.

The helicopter edged north, still facing the cliff, the cockpit’s shotgun officer carefully studying the brush through binoculars. Vilenov drew into a tight, trembling ball. It was like having a tornado sneak up on you. Suddenly wind was lashing his face and hair. The tornado steadied at twelve o’clock.

“You in the brush!”

Vilenov came out of his crouch with all the force of a detonating grenade. As though buffeted by a physical blow, the chopper reared, did a complete back flip, and plummeted spiraling to the crowded highway below. CHP cars began ramming one another, ATVs created erratic patterns in the sand. One drove directly into the surf.

Halfway up the cliff, Vilenov clawed his way to a closed park-to-highway staircase, then bounded up the crumbling cement steps and scrambled over the staircase’s locked chain link gate. The park was a bizzaro-world riot. Policemen were clubbing seniors and vagabonds while their huge K9 Shepherds savaged citizens, handlers, and each other. Unnoticed, Vilenov loped back to the bridge, hopped the rail, and tumbled down to the highway. A steaming police cruiser lay smashed against a cement retaining wall at the tunnel’s entrance, and beside this car ran a telltale trail of blood drops; zigzagging across the lanes, disappearing down the embankment. Dash, seat, and carpet were flecked and smeared with blood. Finding the key still in the ignition, Vilenov fired her up and made a hard U-turn. He floored the car through the tunnel and onto the 10 freeway. Nobody was going to screw him this time. He flipped off the howling emergency vehicles racing toward the beach.

A lone helicopter rose like a Harpy in his left-hand mirror. Vilenov pounded his fist on the steering wheel three times, and the car’s windshield cracked, spiderwebbed, and exploded. A flurry of glass chips blew back in his face. He snarled and accelerated as a second helicopter, a third, then a fourth, appeared in a long ascending tail.

Eastbound cars, their drivers freaked-out by all the road-and air activity, were creating an irregularly spaced obstacle course. Vilenov cut off and tailgated indiscriminately while triggering his lights and siren, causing those already confused drivers to panic. As his rage increased, cars spun out or veered off the freeway. Off-pavement, sporadic events occurred at each new burst of emotion: cracks raced across retaining walls, signs rattled, concussive reports in the scrub were followed by brief wisps of smoke.

Vilenov hurtled across the 405, his anger scattering everything in his path. He threw a quick look back. The chain of helicopters was much nearer, closing in a tight eastbound line; even as he watched, a fifth fell in line high above the fourth. Miles ahead, half a dozen others were circling like gulls riding a lazy current. He pushed the car over 100, thin plumes of smoke rising in the city around him.

And as he accelerated, with chips of glass in his hair and the wind in his eyes, he imagined a fleeing figure; stumbling, exhausted, regularly looking back, the face taut with terror. Lawrence Abram. Pampered turncoat and thief. And every time that despised face flashed back it was as if a piston had just pounded in Vilenov’s skull. He opened and shut his eyes with the piston’s rhythm, sensing a seizure coming on. “Not now!” he whimpered. “Not...now!” A succession of small explosions to his left sounded in perfect sync with the piston. On his right a tractor-trailer swerved wildly, the forty-foot trailer disengaging and flipping across the lanes. Vilenov avoided it automatically, going through brake, wheel, and accelerator in one motion. But all he could see was that face!

Sitting straight-up as he drove, he opened his mouth and just screamed.