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I peeked up over the side of the grave. Vassily was crawling away, swearing in Russian, his Desert Eagle pointed off into the brush. By the light of his remaining headlight, I could see multiple bullet wounds across his massive chest. In the undergrowth, where Vassily was shooting, I saw a sustained flash and heard
pop-pop-pop
again. Dirt kicked up around him. Another bullet buried itself in his gut. I don’t think the Whale noticed.

I thought briefly about waving to my rescuer but decided against it. After all, just because someone wanted Vassily dead didn’t mean they wanted me alive.

Vassily looked over at me. “You stay!” he shouted.

I hit the ground as he fired, dirt raining down on the back of my neck.

The chatter of the gun brought a fresh round of cursing from Vassily, and this time his answering gunshots didn’t throw more dirt on me. I waited until I could hear the clacking sounds that said Vassily was reloading. I poked my head up to make sure, just as he was ramming home another clip into the butt of his gun. I pulled myself up over the side, stumbled once, nearly fell, and bolted for the edge. The turnoff fell into a deep slope, dotted with California walnut trees and chaparral.

“Nicky! You stay!”

I felt like I should have said something pithy to Vassily, but I just jumped over the side. The
choom
followed me a second later, but I was already eating dirt and sliding down the hill on my ass, then on hands and knees as I tried to get to my feet. The gunfire and Russian cursing continued. Finally, I was able to stand, forearms, knees, and palms burning from where the hill had probably skinned them, and started down again as fast as I could. Finding the right mix of speed and caution wasn’t easy, but I had good motivation. On one hand, I had a Russian mobster at the top who was quite clear in his desire to murder me. On the other, this hill was fairly steep, and I didn’t fancy sliding down it on my face.

“Nicky! You get back here!” Both guns fired again, getting quieter as I descended, hopping and running at turns, the stones in my shoes biting back with each step.

I hit the first stand of oaks and breathed a sigh of relief. Something between me and Vassily. I still wasn’t sure Vassily wouldn’t remember who he was and get up, ignoring the machine-gun fire in order to eat both the phantom gunman and me. Still, having some trees as shelter went a long way to restoring my peace of mind.

I glanced back up to where Vassily’s remaining headlight still speared off into the darkness. There was a single shot from the Whale’s pistol and the light winked out, almost like the bastard knew I was looking. More shots fired and pretty soon, the chattering stopped.

The shots from the pistol continued for a few more volleys and then they stopped, too. I swore. Would Vassily follow? Could he? How the hell many times had that guy been shot?

I turned back into the darkness and plunged into the trees. The branches scratched at my face and hands, but I kept moving through them as fast as I could and tried not to take a header into one of the trunks. I couldn’t hear much over the sound of my blood or the persistent ringing in my ears from the gunshots. For all I knew, Vassily was following me like the boulder in the beginning of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
.

 The trees were growing denser, multiplying as I got closer to flat ground. I pressed through them, not even trying to be quiet.

I smelled it first. Like a skunk, although not quite as powerful. Less of a diesel stink and more rotten milk. It might have been a coyote, but that was a lot of stench for one canid.

Then I heard other sounds. Heavy footfalls. Cracking branches from something very large moving through the same terrain I was. The deep huffing of something powerful sucking in great gusts of air. And that’s when I knew for certain that I was not alone in those trees.

Bigfoot was there with me.

SUPPOSED “EXPERTS” LIKE TO CALL HIM “SASQUATCH,”
probably because it sounds more formal than “Bigfoot.” It’s a derivative of a word in some Native American language that roughly translates to “hoax that will cost the white man millions in tourist dollars.” Daniel Boone called the big ape-like mammal he shot a “Yahoo,” but there was no way that would stick, not even after Bigfoot founded that company. Every place he shows up, he gets another name: skunk ape, yeti, alma, Momo. He doesn’t really give a crap what you call him, so I’m sticking with Bigfoot. Anyway, that name showed up in the ’50s, when people started finding his footprints around. It’s not the most creative name, sure, but let’s be honest: the guy has some seriously big feet.

On the West Coast, he keeps to the forested areas. He wouldn’t have come this far south had Los Angeles not been such a Mecca for people like us. He spends most of his time in Northern California, in the forested corridor between the 5 and 101 freeways that makes up the Trinity, Klamath, and Redwood National Parks. When he’s in LA, he usually sticks to the San Gabriels or Griffith Park. If he has a meeting in town, I mean.

Bigfoot pops up in a surprising amount of conspiracies, and it’s a testament to the guy that even
I’m
not sure of all of his exact ties. He’s mostly featured in Little Green Men stories, though he has cameos in the weird Himalayan Buddhist groups, too. As near as I can figure, he collects cash from a couple different secret societies, though I have exactly zero idea how he spends any of it. Or on what.

To the public at large, the conception of what he looks like is the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film. It shows a pretty convincing sequence of a large primate striding along some rocky terrain. The movements are relatively inhuman and in line with the differences in physiology you’d see in an ape that size and with that posture. It’s been analyzed over and over again by experts around the world and not a single one has ever seen the zipper.

Sad thing is, that
is
a costume. Sorry. I wasn’t part of the group that faked it. I wasn’t even alive in ’67, no matter what a couple of my more outlandish IDs might say. But I’ve met a few of the hoaxers and I’ve worn the suit, which really is a marvel of engineering. I mean, it was hot in there and smelled like a mile of wet dog ass, but I sort of felt like Bigfoot, even though I was looking through concealed eyeholes in his nipples. No, sorry, the Patterson-Gimlin film does not show Bigfoot.

 Oddly enough, it was
filmed
by Bigfoot. So you see the confusion.

Anyway, I was panicked enough that it took me a moment to realize it wasn’t Vassily following me. In my defense, they have some similarities. Like a lot of severely overweight guys, Vassily smells like a combination of baby powder, cologne, deodorant, and flatulence. And because it’s Vassily, I swear the guy has a touch of a pretty distinctive fish smell to him. I like to think of it as krill.

Bigfoot has a wilder scent. He smells a little like a homeless man’s dreadlocks.

Bigfoot and Vassily are of comparable size. The living fossil is taller, but the Russian is wider.

“Hey, Bob,” Bigfoot said. The voice came from the darkness. I could only see a large shadow moving through the trees with impressive speed and grace.

“Hey,” I said back. “You don’t have a giant Russian with you, by any chance?”

“Nope. Saw one a ways back.”

“Let’s leave him where he is.”

I never stopped. Bigfoot was skittish, even with people he knew fairly well. He hated being looked at and would only talk to me as long as we kept moving. He huffed a few times, and even though I knew him, it was hard not to get nervous at animal breathing that deep and loud.

“I thought you were retired,” he said.

“I am. Or was. I don’t really know. Someone framed Mina for murder, so I’m down here clearing that up.” I paused, picking my way over a dangerous section of ground. “It’s not going well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Bigfoot said. He always liked Mina, ever since I’d introduced them last May. “Is that what that was all about?” I heard the gesture in his voice, catching only some movement in his big silhouette out of the corner of my eye.

“Kind of. Side effect of being back in town.”

“That was Vassily Zhukovsky, wasn’t it?”

“Sure was.”

“Heard he was in prison.”

“He was.”

“Oh.” Bigfoot considered that tidbit while I tried to figure out if the Russian Mob had any deals concerning sasquatch. “You don’t think he framed Mina, do you?”

“He was the most logical suspect. He hates the both of us and he has the kind of resources to get it done, but he didn’t seem to know Mina was in jail. I think he wants us both dead and decided to take the opportunity.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Bob.”

“Me too.”

“I hope Mina’s all right,” Bigfoot said. “Give her my love, okay?”

“I’ll do that.”

“Keep going the way you’re going. You should get to a game trail in a little while, and you can follow that down to PCH.”

“Thanks, big guy.”

“Good luck, Bob.” And just like that, he Batmanned me. You know, when Commissioner Gordon is mid-sentence, and he turns around and Batman is gone? Same thing. Only instead of a guy basically dressed like night, this was eight feet of stinking shag carpeting. It’s one of the more impressive abilities I’ve seen in the Information Underground, and I’ve seen shit, to quote Winston Zeddemore, that would turn you white.

The tree cover broke, and down below I could see the strip of gray illuminated by the yellow lights of streetlamps and cars winding along the surface. I shivered in the wind coming off the Pacific. I was in short sleeves and it hadn’t been day for a while now. The sky had begun to lighten, turning from the purple of the Los Angeles night into a softer blue. I started to see the ground in front of my feet and followed the game path Bigfoot had mentioned. Rabbits, deer, coyote, and maybe even the occasional mountain lion had built me a nice and relatively safe groove to make my way to flat ground.

I made it to PCH right as the sun was rising over my back on Wednesday. Almost a full day and no real progress made, except for eliminating Vassily as a suspect. Maybe. I didn’t like cutting him right out of hand. The Whale had to be involved in this somehow; the timing of his escape was much too convenient. I sat down by the side of the road and took off my dusty shoes, shaking out the yellow rocks and dirt that had accumulated in them.

I listened to the waves crashing against the rocks below as I pulled out my phone and called a cab. Normally I would have taken the metrorail back to my car, but that didn’t exist on the west side. I’d like to blame the Rosicrucians or the Freemasons for that, but it was actually just some rich assholes who didn’t want the riffraff coming into Beverly Hills. Money talks, as they say, so for the time being I was walking.

The cab picked me up twenty minutes later and I dozed in the backseat on the expensive ride back to my car. It wasn’t restful, but it was a damn sight better than being in a trunk. Once I had been returned to the docks, I paid the nice man who smelled like exotic tobacco and got out of his cab.

I stood by my car for a long moment, trying to blink away my fatigue into the steadily brightening day. I was thinking I didn’t have much in the way of leads when my attention turned back to the Barbary Coast. Things were picking up, the huge cargo cranes unloading long, drab boxes filled with poisonous junk from China. Vinnie Cha said Regina del Monaco wanted to see me. Chances were he already told her I had been at Vassily’s club, and might have mentioned the brouhaha with the Whale. If I was on her radar, I should probably find out what was going on.

Hell, it might even relate.

On the stereo: “Missing the Moon” by the Field Mice.

Normal love song, right? Wrong. Look at the title. Now look at the lyrics. When we landed on the moon, the Little Green Men were there waiting for us. They hovered over the Sea of Tranquility in UFOs the size of towns. Just ask Neil Armstrong. It was a warning. That’s why we have yet to go back. So the song was a taunting message from the Little Green Men to us. Thanks, guys. We needed that.

The Rosicrusophists were based out of a mansion in Westwood. Sometimes I wondered why they weren’t closer to their powerbase, which was Hollywood, considering how many starlets and It Boys were seen with the rose pins on their lapels. Wearing one of those said this person was a spiritual being who was being separated from their money through a combination of brainwashing and guile. It also said that talking to this person was likely to get you a forceful handshake and some lingering eye contact. It was a useful visual shorthand.

The cult had come out of the electric typewriter of one Ubiquitous Lothar Fitz-Chang. He becomes more recognizable by his Writer’s Guild-approved penname of Frank Wood. He wrote a chunk of the third season of
Bonanza
and created that weird show about anorexic cops,
The Extremely Thin Blue Line,
after an ill-timed flirtation with the Guardian Servitors of the Anorectic Praxis. Unfortunately for Lothar, the failure of his show and the spate of lawsuits that followed effectively bankrupted him and ensured he’d never work in Hollywood again. It marked the first time in history anyone had ever lost a job by making actresses too thin.

With the bills piling up and his first and third wives (there was some bigamy happening) threatening to divorce him and take him for everything he owned (which at the time was an electric typewriter, a fifth of Wild Turkey, a rathole apartment on the east end of Hollywood, and six bottles of trucker uppers), Wood knew he had to do something. His solution was to down the whiskey and chew through the drugs in an ironic parallel to how his actresses had claimed to lose the weight during the filming of
The Extremely Thin Blue Line
, and write a tract. It was a self-help book called
Meet Your Face,
which made about as much sense as the title.