“He’s a Russian that Frank met about three years ago. Frank hired Carl and doesn’t go anywhere without him.”
I got up and said, “I’ll keep in touch.”
**
Hondo called me on my cell as I drove down Sunset. He said, “I struck out on this end. You do any good?”
“Nope. Frank wasn’t at the studio, so I’m headed to some place called Siberia on Sunset to talk to him, see if I can dig up anything that way.”
“Try the Tunguska Blast while you’re there.”
“The what?”
“The Tunguska Blast, named after the comet that hit Tunguska.”
“I know about the comet, what’s the drink?”
“They make it with vodka that’s chilled to somewhere around minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit and mixed with some kind of mint and their special secret ingredients that are imported from the Tunguska area in Siberia, and something else that I think is Sprite, then they shoot compressed pure oxygen into it until it foams, and then you drink it.”
“And you want me to try that?”
“Sure. It’s not like anything else you’ve ever tasted. They say the oxygen aeration also keeps you from having a hangover.”
I thought about asking him how swallowing bubbles of oxygenated vodka into my stomach would keep me from a hangover since the oxygen wouldn’t be in my lungs, but wasn’t sure I was ready for his explanation.
Hondo said, “Well, I’ve got something else I want to check. I’ll go back to the house and do a little looking.”
I knew he meant Landman’s mansion. “Do you have a key?”
“Oh sure, I can get in. Later.”
I put away the cell phone and rubbed my forehead. With Hondo, sometimes it is best not to ask.
**
Siberia was located in one of those buildings on the Sunset Strip that have had a hundred different club names since the sixties. I parked and got out of my truck to look it over and watch people going in. Siberia looked like a place for the rougher element and not the usual choice of entertainment executives, although I recognized some of the younger acting crowd going inside. I went in and let my eyes adjust.
The decor was something out of a B movie. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with blow-ups of photographs of the actual Tunguska blast site. It showed a forest of conifer trees blown flat, stripped of branches, and extending as far as the eye could see over the rises in the distance. Complete devastation, with the trunks laid out like thousands of dominoes knocked flat. The photos had been color tinted and looked as good as Ted Turner’s techniques on old black and white movies.
Half of the tables and chair backs were made of pine logs laid out to flow in the same direction as the wall photographs of felled trees. I guess that was to give the customer a feel of being in the center of the blast. There was another area consisting of sofas, love seats and armchairs that commanded the space between the dance floor and the pool tables.
The bar was thirty feet long, with comfortable looking stools and a brass foot-rail. Behind it in the corner was a two-tiered table with a large barrel the size of a whiskey keg on top. Below it were racks of what must have been a dozen silver cylinders that looked like quarter-sized aqua-lungs, complete with regulators and small black tubes running from them. The tanks had shoulder straps and it looked like the cylinders would ride high, not reaching lower than mid back. As I watched, a cute waitress went to the stack, got one and put it on. She checked the nozzle and I heard it hiss. Must be the compress
ed oxygen Hondo mentioned.
Siberia was doing pretty good for an afternoon crowd. Eight guys in leather jackets with cut-off sleeves were in the corner shooting pool, and another twenty or thirty people were arranged around the room and standing at the bar. The young acting crowd was standing together on the dance floor, deciding where to sit. The smell of cigarette smoke was faint, and I could hear multiple exhaust fans working overtime to keep the air clean. They were powerful, too. I walked under one and felt the upward breeze ruffle my hair. The Red Hot Chili Peppers played on the sound system, but not loud enough to make the patrons yell to be heard by each other. The ratio was five to one men-to-women, but a couple of the women looked like they could hold their own.
A young waitress dressed in silver hot pants and matching sports bra and wearing one of the silver aqua lungs stopped and asked what I’d like. Might as well be reckless, I thought. “I’ll have a Tunguska Blast.”
She smiled, “Very good, sir.” and left. I watched her walk away and thought the silver aqua-lung thingee went well with the view of her rounded silver behind.
I spotted Frank Meadows sitting on one of the love seats, talking to a massive black bodybuilder. The bodybuilder was shirtless; wearing suspenders with his Levi’s and work boots. Five feet behind Frank was a big, rawboned man leaning against the wall. I took this to be Carl Rakes. His hair was long and dirty-blond, hanging to his shoulders. He wore a white, long-sleeved shirt and jeans. He had his thumbs hooked in the jeans pockets. I could make out the dark edges of tattoos peeking beyond the cuffs.
The waitress came back with my drink and balanced it on the tray while she fished a pencil-thin black hose from over her shoulder and shot a noisy blast of air into the tall drink. It bubbled and fizzed and, I swear, changed colors as I watched.
“Cheers,” she said. “It’s best to knock it back all at once.” I took the drink from the tray and she smiled again, “That’ll be twenty dollars, or shall I run a tab?”
“Twenty dollars?”