“Swell,” Nolan said. He lit a cigarette and said, “Got a name?”
“Me?”
“You.”
Jesus thought for a moment, scratched his beard. “I’m called Zig-Zag.”
“Good,” Nolan said. “You’re the one I was looking for.”
Nolan strolled around the room, glanced at other posters hanging on the deteriorating green plaster walls. Dr. Timothy Leary. Fu Manchu For Mayor. The Mothers of Invention. Kill a Commie For Christ.
There were some paperback books in one corner, several ashtrays scattered around, a few blankets by the window. Alongside one wall a radiator spat underneath Dr. Leary’s picture. The air was singed with incense.
“Irene Tisor,” Nolan said. He looked out the window and watched the Chelsey River reflect the sun.
“What?”
“Irene Tisor. Did you know her?”
The mass of hair nodded yes.
“What happened to her?”
“Bad trip.”
“Bad trip?”
“A down trip, straight down.”
“Fell?”
“I wasn’t there, man. Nobody was there but her... and she must’ve not been all there herself.”
“What’s the word?”
“Huh?”
“What do people say about it?”
“Nothin’... just that Irene thought she could fly. Guess she couldn’t. Bummer.”
“Was she a friend of yours?”
“So-so.”
“How’d you know her?”
“She hung around the Third Eye. We talked.”
The Third Eye was a nightclub frequented by Chelsey’s would-be hippie element. The local underground newspaper was also called the Third Eye and the club was its editorial headquarters. Zig-Zag was the sixth person Nolan had spoken to that morning, and all had mentioned Irene as a regular at the Third Eye.
“What’d she like to talk about?”
“Life.”
“Life.”
“That’s right, man. Philosophy one-oh-one.”
“What’d she think of it?”
“Of what?”
“Life. What’d she think of it?”
Zig-Zag flashed a yellow grin. “Groovy.”
Right.
“Was Irene Tisor one of you?”
Zig-Zag flashed the grin again. “I give, man. What am I?”
“Whatever the hell you call it. Hippie.”
“I’m not a hippie, that’s a label hung on my generation by a biased press!”
“Flower child, love generation, freak, whatever. Was she one of you?”
“Well, in spirit, man... but in spirit only. There’s a lot of us, we live kind of foot to mouth, know what I mean? We don’t want for much, but hell, we don’t want much.”
“Irene lived pretty good?”
“Better than that. She had an apartment, I hear, with that straight Trask chick.”
“But she was thick with your crowd?”
“She sympathized. She heard the music, all right, she just couldn’t take her clothes off and dance.”
“She heard enough to dance off a building.” Nolan walked over to Dr. Leary’s picture. Down the hall somebody was playing a Joan Baez record, and though Nolan didn’t recognize the voice and was no judge of music, he knew what he didn’t like. Nolan ground out his cigarette in Leary’s bleary left eye.
“Hey, man, what the fuck you doin’, there!” Zig-Zag got up and started toward Nolan, flexing what muscle there was on his skeletal frame.
Nolan’s mouth became a humorless line. “You’re the love generation, remember?”
Zig-Zag brushed the ashes off Leary’s face and said, “What is it buggin’ you, man? You come in here all straight and polite, then you get nasty. What’s buggin’ you?”
“Irene Tisor is dead. I want to know why.”
Zig-Zag shrugged. “Anybody can pull a bad trip, man.”
“Wasn’t she a ‘straight,’ like me?”
“She wasn’t all that straight, man. But I admit I never heard of her taking a trip before this. She got a little high once in a while, blew some pot, all right, but that’s all I ever saw her take on, besides a guy or two.”
“Did she take you on, Zig-Zag?”
“Naw, we just shot the shit. But there’s a guy in the band at the Third Eye she saw pretty regular.”
“What’s his name?”
“Broome. Talks with an English accent, but it’s phony.”
“Broome. Thanks.”
Nolan turned to leave, then stopped and said, “Pot cost much around here? LSD and the rest, it sock you much?”
“Cost of living’s high, man. Somebody’s making the bread in this town.”
“How about you, Zig-Zag? Your old man, what kind of business is he in?”
“My old man? He’s a banker.”
“I see. Where?”
“Little town north of Chicago.”
“You get this month’s check okay?”
“Huh? Oh. All right, so he sends me a little bread to help out. Big deal.”
Nolan nodded to Bonnie Parker’s picture. “You’re lucky Bonnie and Clyde were before their time, Zig-Zag.”
“Huh?”
“They were in the banking business, too.” Nolan turned and left the room, went down the stairs and out the ex-frat.
5
It was almost noon now and Nolan, sitting behind the wheel of the Lincoln, looked back on a morning of interviews in Chelsey’s quote hippie colony unquote. It had gotten him nothing more than a few scraps of information and a bad taste in his mouth.
He glanced over Sid Tisor’s notebook of information on daughter Irene. He had gone through the six male names in the notes — Zig-Zag and five others like him, and now all that remained were the two female names, Lyn Parks and Vicki Trask. There were probably dozens of Irene’s friends her father hadn’t known about — all Tisor had was a handful of names culled from Irene’s occasional letters.
Lyn Parks lived at the Chelsey Arms Hotel. Nolan parked a block away and walked toward it, passing several clusters of long haired men and women wearing the latest thing in wilted flowers, plastic love beads and Goodwill Store fashions. The block was run-down but distinctly not tenement — secondhand stores, burger joints, head shops — though in Chelsey, Nolan had a hunch this would be as close to a slum as he would get.
The Chelsey Arms Hotel had seen a better day. Its theater-style marquee bore faded red lettering that didn’t spell anything, and there was a worn carpet leading to double doors which said CAH proudly but faintly. Once in the lobby Nolan saw that the Arms was somewhat ramshackle but hardly in danger of being condemned; he’d stayed in worse. A desk clerk, in a rumpled gray suit, seemed to be trying to decide whether Nolan was a cop, or a salesman looking for female companionship.
There were Chelsey-style flower children all over the lobby, and Nolan sat in a chair across from two of them who were curled as one on a couch. Then he noticed the man standing by the cigar counter, pretending to look over the paperback rack.
Tulip.
Nolan got up and strolled to one of the pay phones to make his first contact with Vicki Trask. He would have to lose Tulip before he met with the girl, Irene’s roommate, the most important name on Tisor’s list. Nolan didn’t imagine it would make too great a first impression to have Tulip barge in and turn his visit into a brawl.
He looked her number up in the book, dropped a dime in the slot and dialed.
A soft but somehow icy voice answered. “This is Vicki.”
“Miss Trask, my name is Earl Webb. I’m a friend of Sid Tisor, Irene’s father.”
“Yes, of course. How is Mr. Tisor?”
“He’s upset about his daughter.”
“Well, I can understand... please send him my deepest sympathy.”
“I’m afraid I’m asking for more than sympathy, Miss Trask.”