IVIV: Chapter 3—Swedish Fish

[Robin Landseadel]

Chapter three [all three and a half pages] serves the same function as  
many similar episodes in Chandler's stories. The P.I. needs to tease  
out some info from the local police without saying much of anything  
about his clients.

Pat Dubonnet is the cop who called Hope Harligan with the news about  
Coy Harligan's "OD".  Pat Dubonnet works at the "Gordita Beach" police  
outpost. The Manhattan Beach Police outpost looks like this:

http://www.code2high.com/Manhattan%20Beach%20Police/mbpd_station_3.jpg

http://tinyurl.com/nlp2wx

	He drove past the Gordita Beach station house twice before he
	recognized it. The place had been radically transformed,
	courtesy of federal anti-drug money, from a pierside booking
	desk with a two-coil hot plate and a jar of instant coffee into a
	palatial cop's paradise featuring locomotive-size espresso
	machines, its own mini-jail, a motor pool full of rolling weaponry
	that would otherwise be in Vietnam, and a kitchen with a crew
	of pastry chefs working around the clock.
	IV, page 46

Easy to imagine local enforcement agencies getting flooded with  
Federal cash during the dawn of the Nixon administration.

Doc enters the station with "a foil wrapped object about a foot long"  
which sounds potentially like a drug but turns out to be a hot dog 
—"one with everything" though that's not a quote, it's a punch-line.  
Pat inhales the dog while Doc works on getting under Pat's skin. What  
Doc finds out from Pat is that Mickey'nBigfootarethisclose. Meanwhile,  
there's echos of Hector's fantasies of getting on the Tube from  
Vineland:

	" . . .It's bound to be a Movie for TV, ain't it, whatever  
happens . . ."

I've heard of the Surfer-Lowrider wars but have little to offer on the  
subject save that the "Locals Only" attitude of some surfers erupted  
at the time and continues long afterwards. Google "surfer-lowrider  
wars" and all you get is a reference back to the Inherent Vice wiki.

As for Swedish Fish:

	Swedish Fish are chewy winegum candies especially notable
	apart from other varieties of winegums in Sweden. They have
	been developed with special flavors specifically for the North
	American market[1] by the Swedish candy producer Malaco,
	which exports products to North America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Fish

This ad for the little fish candies is a little masterpiece of  
surrealism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0MGFJK7YRM