IVIV: Partners

[Robin Landseadel]

Doc and Luz have eyes for each other:

	Luz was gazing over his shoulder into Mickey's bedroom. "He
	always used to take me in the shower to fuck," she reminisced. "I
	never got a chance to do anything on that groovy bed in there."

	"Seems easy enough to arrange," Doc said smoothly, "maybe-" At
	which point, wouldn't you know, came a horrible low-fidelity
	screech from an intercom speaker out in the hall. " Luz! ¿Dónde 	 
estás, mi hijita?"

¿Dónde estás mi hijita? = Where are you, my child?

	"Shit," murmured Luz. ''Another time, perhaps."

	At the door Doc gave her one of the fake MICRO cards, which had
	 his real office number on it. She slipped it in the back pocket of
	her jeans.

	"You're not really a shrink, are you?"

	"Y-maybe not. But I do have a couch?"

	"Psicodtlico, `ese!" Flashing those famous teeth.

Psicodtlico 'ese  trans: Psychedelic, dude!

  [rimshot! ]

Wonder how TRP's teeth are doing these days.

As Doc gets into his car his old nemesis Bigfoot arrives, this time  
with another cop, one Doc doesn't recall.

	 . . .this other cop could in no way have been Bigfoot's partner,
	though he might be a close relative-they both had the same
	smooth and evil look . . .

Interesting line here, something some of you children may not have  
experienced:—"Doc deployed his most feckless doper's grin"—recalls the  
ole hippie cover of acting stupider than they really were, thus  
inciting the quadrilaterals to spill their guts, the aforementioned  
straights usually working from the assumption that the Hippie wasn't  
listening anyway. Worked for a while but nothing that easy lasts for  
long.

What the doper's paranoia brings to Doc here is now recalling that  
Bigfoot used to have a partner, and even though Doc pretty much  
considers the cops to be there to protect and defend "The Man", aka  
"Them", Doc  still thinks they have a pretty cool code of honor within  
their own ranks. If there is an Inherent Vice creeping into the tale  
here it is how that code broke down during the Nixon repression.

	This bond between partners was nearly the only thing Doc had
	ever found to admire about the LAPD. For all the Department's
	long sorrowful history of corruption and abuse of power, here was
	at least something they had not sold but kept for themselves,
	forged in the dangerous life-and-death uncertainties of one
	working day after another—something real that had to be
	respected. No faking it, no question of buying it with favors,
	money, promotions-the entire range of capitalist inducement
	couldn't get you five seconds of attention to your back when it
	really counted, you had to go out there and earn it by putting your
	pitiful ass on the line, again and again. Without knowing any
	details of the history Bigfoot and his late partner had been
	through together, Doc would still bet the contents of his stash for
	the next year that Bigfoot if, improbably, asked to generate a list of
	people he loved, would have put this guy up near the top.

We finish the scene with Doc talking to himself, something the kindly  
Doc seems to be doing a lot of these days.