The Delta Star (23 page)

Distilled right down to the bottom of the test tube, as it were, was nothing but a detective’s hunch and instinct that someone in this place was running amok, and had killed a private eye and a hooker and was trying to kill the macho maid, Dagmar Duffy. Each time Lupe Luna tried to pump him for more specific information, he’d change the subject. After his third vodka he tried to get the conversation back to where it belonged: sex.

“And is your dance card pretty well filled up around here?” Mario Villalobos asked. “I imagine there’re a few prospects among the faculty?”

“
Not that many,” she said. “These scientific types seem to have a biannual rutting season. They sublimate their sex urges for study and research and then suddenly go into a rutting frenzy like moose. That’s when I start getting phone calls. How about cops?”

“They’re not so consumed by their work,” he said, taking a look at the two at the bar. “But they tend to get very tired in later life.”

By now the two postdocs had scooted off and were replaced at the bar by two faculty members who did not remotely fit the description of the man in the pinstripe suit. The Bad Czech and Hans were both moving on the lady bartender.

“It’s really true,” Lupe Luna told Mario Villalobos, “that pure science can be very erotic to. these people. I’ve dated scientists who described their work the way you’d describe an orgy.”

“I couldn’t describe an orgy,” Mario Villalobos said, “but if you have any orgy stories, let’s have them!”

“What time do you want to mingle at the open house?” she said, looking with antelope eyes over the rim of the glass.

“About eight o’clock,” he said. “This is a long shot, but it’s a way to see lots of chemistry professors at one time. In the flesh.”

“Then we don’t have time to get into orgies,” she said, clearly not used to three whiskey sours.

“I’m starting to feel the neurons bubbling,” the detective said, reaching across the table and rubbing his finger along hers. “I was starting to think that catching crooks was all I had left.”

“I’m feeling strangely sexy myself,” she said, and the words were getting slurred. “I think this mystery is a turn-on.”

“Agatha Christie never made you feel like this?”

“Uh uh,” she said, and he felt her slender ankle touch his under the table.

Meanwhile, The Bad Czech had found a graduate student who was chestier than the postdoc. Except that she wore very grubby cutoffs and a man’s BVD T-shirt without a bra. She was by no means the most unglamorous woman in the place.

“I’m a rookie gynecologist and I’m giving free Pap smears,” Hans whispered to the grad student, who tried to ignore him.

“Let’s wet that T-shirt down and get a weather report,” Hans said slyly, as he nearly fell off the barstool slinking closer to her.

“Get lost,” she said, glaring at the skinny guy in the leisure suit who obviously didn’t belong here.

“If it was wet, I’d either know how cold it is or if maybe you like me!” Hans cried, skulking along the bar in her direction.

“Nerd alert!” she yelled to the other women and Hans decided she was probably as nasty as that cunt who told everyone about his P. E. problem. Which gave him an idea: he wondered if he could find a hotshot chemistry professor who might help him out.

Meanwhile, The Bad Czech gave up eyeballing the grad student in the T-shirt when one of her male classmates said, “Some of the women around here are slightly more than feminist. That one gives lectures on how to live a lifetime without men.”

“She looks too old anyways,” The Bad Czech said to the gangly student, having to shout to be heard over the noise in the basement bar.

“I know one guy who was in graduate school ten years. He was gray when he got out,” the kid said.

With just enough booze in him to make him play detective, The Bad Czech said, “There must be a lot a stress around here. You ever know a professor to go wacko and maybe do somethin … violent?”

“A professor?” The student ran his fingers through his snarled hair. “I heard of a student who bludgeoned his adviser at Stanford. Typical science student. He put a bag over the adviser’s head to keep from bloodying his papers. Then he told the judge that after ten years of graduate school, Folsom Prison would be a piece of cake.”

“Can’t think of any violent ones?”

“Hard to say. Lots of them are nuts.”

They were interrupted just then when the grad student in the T-shirt yelled at Hans, “No, I don’t want to learn how to do a choke hold! I can take care of myself!”

“But it’s the carotid artery hold!” Hans leered. “You know, the one they talk about in the news where the cops choke peoples’ necks and they croak sometimes?”

“I do not want you choking my neck, man!” the grad student yelled.

“How about you choking my neck?” Hans cried. He was unstoppable when he was horny like this.

“No, I don’t want to choke your goddamn neck!” she shouted.

“Then how about spanking me?” Hans screamed.

The graduate student grabbed her beer and stalked off to one of the tables while The Bad Czech said, “Ya can’t behave nowheres, can ya? Ya gotta always be disgustin!”

The K-9 cop waved hornily at the bartender and said, “One more double, my dear! For the freeway!”

Returning to business, The Bad Czech asked the student, “Which professors are the most… emotional. Like which ones get really overexcited if things don’t go right in their experiments or whatever. Is there a certain field a study that attracts, say, aggressive ones?”

“I think you oughtta ask her,” the kid said, pointing to the lady bartender, who was listening.

“Most of the people you see here right now are into chemistry,” she said to The Bad Czech. “They’re the jovial ones and they drink like fishes.”

“I don’t think they sleep around much at their conferences,” another student piped in. She was in chemical engineering and looked very disappointed that chemists didn’t sleep around much at their conferences.

“Maybe they drink too many chemicals with their booze and they can’t sleep around too much,” The Bad Czech shrugged, and that again reminded Hans that he load to talk to a likely chemist about his recent “problem.”

“Biologists are clean-cut and healthy,” the bartender said. “So they do sleep around at their conferences and have lots of fun.”

“Physicists have great integrity,” one of the postdocs piped up.

“That’s true,” the bartender said. “They always pay their bar tab. But they’re the least concerned about clothes and shaving and combing their hair.”

“I think geologists are womanizers,” another postdoc offered. “They get horny looking for rocks out there in the desert.”

“Engineers are the cheapest,” another student said. “They let someone else buy. They actually try to sneak their own cheap wine in here sometimes.”

“Well, in terms of quantitative science, chemistry is a lot harder than biology,” one student argued. “So you tend to drink more.”

“Physics is more rigorous,” another told The Bad Czech.

“Geology is in the basement,” another told him.

“Physicists keep their word,” the bartender said. “They also eat better food when they’re not forgetting to eat.”

And so forth.

The Bad Czech realized he wasn’t getting anywhere trying to find a criminal “type” and was about to try another tack when one of the students told a riddle.

“Here’s an ellipsoid swimming pool riddle,” the student said. “If you dive in at one focus, will water splash at the other focus? Not allowing for water viscosity, of course?”

“Not another theoretical physicist,” one student groaned.

“Water waves aren’t like light waves,” a student noted.

“A swimming pool isn’t the Whispering Dome,” another joined in. “Water waves aren’t like sound waves.”

“Because of the uneven depth of the water, the waves won’t hit the focus at the same time,” still another offered.

“I said, not allowing for relative depth and viscosity,” the riddler reminded.

“The answer is yes,” three of them said at once.

And The Bad Czech was getting dizzy. He walked over to Hans and said, “They might as well be talkin Cambodian!”

“Might as well be talking in tongues,” the K-9 cop complained. “I thought I was getting somewhere with the one in the T-shirt.”

And then, feeling confused by all the jokes he didn’t understand, and wishing he was in The House of Misery where at least he was the smartest one at the bar, The Bad Czech prompted another of those tiny vagaries that trigger more significant events and seem to indicate that all men are linked in a great and mysterious chain.

Either that, or as cops tend to believe, it’s all a freaking accident. It came to pass because The Bad Czech took a pee on a tree.

It never occurred to him that there was no downstairs rest room, and he walked through a basement door and found himself roaming down a long corridor into another, and finally found a door which led him outside at dusk. The need had come on him fifteen minutes earlier, but with all the confusing talk he had waited. Now he was bursting.

Once outside, he roamed near the tennis courts and didn’t see anything like a rest room. He had to go and he was cranky. He started back and was startled to learn that he had already drunk himself into double vision. He was getting mad at the world. He looked around and saw an olive tree waiting in the dusk.

When he got to the tree, he unzipped his fly and began urinating. Suddenly a bellowing Spanish-accented voice in the shadows said: “
Ees
magnificent to find a human being in
thees Mee
ckey Mouse place who has the
huevos
to pee on a tree!”

The Bad Czech quickly finished, zipped up the fly on his doubleknits and saw a man step forward. The man was of medium height, middle-aged, and resembled Benito Mussolini. His feathery hair looked like the topknot on a cockatoo.

“Ya scared me!” The Bad Czech said.

“I was just trying to get away from the
Meec
key Mouse
estupidos
at the open house,” the man said. He reeked of wine from having consumed nearly half a gallon at the cheese and wine table which was a bustling center of activity in the garden.

The man wore a suit about as shapeless and cheap as Mario Villalobos’, and he wore a yellow bow tie with flowers on it. His frayed shirt was stained by red wine and he was nearly as bombed as The Bad Czech. When he got close, The Bad Czech could see that the cockatoo hair was the color of red pepper.

“Peeing on the tree to show contempt!” the man said. “I admire that!”

“Naw, I jist hadda take a leak,” The Bad Czech said. “I got lost. I gotta find my way back to the downstairs bar.”

“I refuse to go
ee
n that
Mee
ckey Mouse bar!” the man announced, and his topknot bounced and danced.

“I thought it was a nice joint,” The Bad Czech said. “Course I drink at a better place.”

“I am Ignacio Mendoza,” the man announced. “Call me Nacho. What do they call you?”

“Everyone calls me Czech cause my folks came from Czechoslovakia.”

“I came from Peru, but nobody calls me Perry,” Ignacio Mendoza said. “What are you doing at th
ees
Meec
key Mouse place?”

“I was jist takin a leak,” The Bad Czech explained. “I was…”

“No, no, no!” Ignacio Mendoza bellowed. “I mean th
ees
Meec
key Mouse social setting. I am a professor. I have no choice. There are bourgeois requirements in my life.”

“Well, see, I’m jist at this here open house to look around. To get my feet wet. To see if I wanna become a … donor. See, I own a string a restaurants in L. A. and I been thinkin about donatin some money.”

“I see!” Ignacio Mendoza said. Then he put his arm around the oxlike shoulder of The Bad Czech and said, “There ees some great research to be done here and I shall be your guide. You have just found a friend!”

“Thanks, Nacho,” The Bad Czech said. “First, can you take me back to the bar, cause I’m lost. And second, can you buy me a drink or two cause I ain’t a member here and I can’t buy my own, even though I’m a rich guy and own about six or seven restaurants.”

“Eet shall be my pleasure, Czech!” Ignacio Mendoza said.

Mario Villalobos thought he was really blitzed when he saw the pair coming through the downstairs door. The Bad Czech in his yellow sportcoat and Ignacio Mendoza with his red-pepper cockatoo topknot made Mario Villalobos put his drink down.

“
Ee
n the old days a man did not have to pee on a tree,” Ignacio Mendoza explained to his new friend. “The Hayman Lounge, before it was a bar, used to be the world’s greatest men’s room. There were more than a dozen peeing places. A plethora of
pissoirs
. Very tall
pissoirs
.”

“I like tall ones,” The Bad Czech said, happy because his new friend bought him a drink.

“
Ee
t was wonderful,” Ignacio Mendoza said. “Can you imagine resting on the john and considering that Albert Einstein himself took a dump
ee
n the same place
ee
n nineteen thirty-two! Come, let us go to a table and perhaps I can persuade you that money would be well spent here.”