“Literally anything?”
He gestured with pipe in hand. “Come now, Nate — you’re not naive. The government programs people to kill all the time — enlists them into the army, tells them killing is for their country’s own good, and the recruits, the draftees, don’t doubt any of that a bit. And Uncle Sam doesn’t have to use hypnosis to put it over.”
I nodded. “It becomes rote. The way Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby Kennedy, for example?”
He looked hurt for a moment, a big put-upon baby, then scowled, looking nothing like a baby at all. “I am not going to comment on that case because I didn’t interview that particular subject.”
“Not for the LAPD? Not for the CIA?”
“Not for anybody!”
I leaned in. “The chief psychologist at San Quentin suspects you did.”
His mouth tightened into a sphincter. “I just told you I didn’t hypnotize Sirhan. I don’t have an opinion because I didn’t treat him. You’ve got a lot of misconceptions about hypnosis and here you are, trying to find some ammunition to put that same old crap out, that people can be hypnotized into doing all these weird things and so on... the old Svengali stuff... and I am not going to be party to it, not for Life, not for Playboy, not for the Journal of the American Institute of Hypnosis! I don’t want to be quoted by you at all. I don’t want to be in your goddamn article. Because I have no desire to be laughed at.”
I turned over a hand. “You’ve had to bump up against ridicule from the beginning of your career, Bill, and you’ve fought back with facts. What is your opinion? Did Sirhan indulge in self-hypnosis, as one of his defense psychiatrists believes? Or was he programmed to kill? Brainwashed by an expert?”
He got to his feet; it was like watching a film of a building implosion play backward. “This has been gone over fifty million times. If that’s all that you have got to interview me about, you are wasting my time and yours. This interview is over.”
He came around the desk, and I wondered if this soft-looking but nonetheless heavyweight creature was going to take a swing at me.
No. He stormed out — of his own office!
For a big fella he moved fucking fast. He was halfway down the reception area by the time I slipped past Alice, who looked up with big green eyes and asked, “Did you want to schedule another appointment?”
I did not answer.
He was out the door already and by the time I got outside, I couldn’t see him, looking side to side and across the street and...
...Jesus, he was right next door, heading into the Classic Cat, home of the biggest topless show in the West.
Fifteen
I followed him. I wasn’t exactly sure why — I’d probably gotten everything out of him I might expect to, but the hypnotist shrink had bolted from his office in what seemed like panic. His next move might prove of interest, so out on the Strip I walked past the Classic Cat’s valet parking and went in under the marquee to enter between two bouncers in tux vests, skinny black ties and bulging muscles. No cover charge, a freestanding sign immediately told me, but the unlisted price of the two-drink minimum would no doubt make a strong man blanch.
It took me a moment before I realized I’d been in here before — not when it was a strip joint, but the Jerry Lewis Restaurant, which the comedian had opened to thumb his nose at his old partner who had Dino’s elsewhere on the Strip. The decor had been luxurious but the fare average, and now Dean Martin was still dishing up drinks and food while his old partner’s joint was offering topless dancers and a little combo playing Louis Prima castoffs, and Jerry didn’t even get a slice.
Remodeled into a fairly plush nightclub, the Classic Cat was a long, rather narrow space. The foyer had a coat room to the right, some offices, and a display area of life-size posters of dancers interspersed with framed 8x10 blow-ups of celebrities on visits to the premises — Jim Arness, Adam West, Bob Crane, Doug McClure, and (oddly) Lana Turner. Pool balls were clacking at left, a bar separating this area from a small stage with seating. Past Roman columns the space opened up to accommodate a black-curtained sea of pink-cloth-covered tables facing a large stage angled across the upper left corner. Occasional cursive pink neon high on walls reminded patrons where they were and guided them to the restrooms and exits.
I did not spot Dr. Bryant in the smaller stage area, where a blonde with enormous piles of hair danced pert-breasted topless in a glittery G-string and matching heels while a bored Latin in a tux played a rhumba number on a grand piano, the band in the main room far enough away to do little more than provide a discordant contrast. The audience was sparse but attentive, some college boys in letter jackets between classes and a few actors in sport coats between gigs... way between, in some cases.
The main showroom was perhaps a third full, mostly businessmen and tourists, women among the latter group, giggling embarrassedly, their men keeping the drinks coming. The dancer here had a ton of brunette hair framing a lovely face and spilling down her bare back. Tanned all over, she was coyly covering her breasts with her arms while she wore only the lower half of a Dorothy Lamour pastel sarong as she managed to summon considerable grace swaying in heels before a zebra backdrop while the little combo (Raul and the Revelations) butchered “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
Somehow she was bridging the South Sea Islands and Darkest Africa just fine and when she entwined her hands behind her head it was as if to make sure we could all see her natural gifts included no scars where breast met bone or around the edges of prominent puffy areolas. The nipples themselves were scolding fingertips. God had made all that, not a plastic surgeon. Nice going, God.
I was standing off to one side and she noticed me. I admit I was staring — she was a striking woman but also something about her was nagging at my mind — and she smiled just a little across the vastness of the room. Or was I just another dipshit patron imagining a stripper had just connected with me?
The good doctor in his yellow sport coat and knotted red scarf was seated at a table near the stage, but didn’t seem to be watching the production. He overwhelmed his chair, a bear on a unicycle. A waitress pretty enough to perform here delivered Bryant a drink that he hadn’t had time to order; it was a silly looking thing in a tall glass with a bunch of fruit pieces on a cocktail stick. He ignored it, but my impression was this was a regular customer’s automatic order.
On stage, the tall busty brunette — well, she was in heels, so maybe she wasn’t tall exactly, perhaps five six — was wrapping up her set. Soon she was deftly scooping up dollar bills that had been tossed on stage during her performance, bowing to her applause, and slipping off.
An M.C. in a striped sport coat, white slacks and out-of-date early Beatle haircut emerged from somewhere to tell his microphone that they’d just seen the incredible Marguerite and that next on the Classic Cat main stage would be that sweet Southern belle, Dixie. The zebra backdrop went up and a Confederate flag unfurled down. Pixie-haired Dixie, blonde, strutted out wearing a Johnny Reb cap and a gray excuse for a vest and a red bikini bottom. Also, for those keeping score, red cowboy boots. The band began to play a bump-and-grind version of “Dixie” and for comic relief sang out, “I wish I was in Dixie!” at appropriate inappropriate moments, which prompted her to smile and waggle a finger at them and her bottom at the audience.
I settled in at a table toward the back. A stunning redhead waitress took my order for a rum and Coke.
“Why aren’t you up on the stage?” I asked her, just being friendly.