Self-Defence

'What kind?'

She frowned. 'I don't know.'

'Just that they were lacy.'

'And pretty. It's like'- her eyes opened-'I guess what you said was true. I didn't have the word 'lacy' when I was four, so I couldn't put it into words. But now that I'm an adult again, it came back to me. Pretty, lacy trees. Does that make sense?'

'Yes.'

She shook her head. 'Lacy trees. That's all I can say. Do you have time for me tomorrow?'

'Tomorrow morning?'

'Any time. I've got nothing to do but read old magazines and watch TV. Being alone in a big house is a lot more solitude than I'm used to.'

'Ken's not around much?'

'Hardly at all. We're planning to spend some time together over the weekend, maybe take a drive somewhere.'

Her hands were busy, fingers rubbing against one another.

'The third man,' she said. 'He keeps his back to me the whole time. It's frustrating. And all I can really see of the other one is the mustache.'

I went and got the copy of Terry Trafficant's book, opened it to the rear flap, and showed her the author photo.

'No, definitely not. Sorry. His mustache is wimpy. Hairy Lip's was big and dark and thick.'

She put the book down.

I said, 'Could you describe him so someone could draw him?'

Her eyes closed again. Her squint looked painful. 'I can see him but I can't really describe his features- it's as if I'm… handicapped. As if part of my brain is working, but I can't translate what I see into words.'

She opened her eyes.

'I think I'd know him if I saw him, but I just can't tell you anything more about him other than the mustache. I'm sorry- it's not like actually seeing. More like images making their way into my mind. That sounds flaky, doesn't it? Maybe I'm totally off base on all of it.'

'We'll just take it as far as it goes, Lucy.'

'But I want to find out- for Karen's sake.'

'It's possible Karen has nothing to do with the dream.'

'She does,' she said quickly. 'I feel it. I know that sounds as if I'm letting my imagination get out of control. But I'm not. I didn't wish this upon myself. Why would I want to be dreaming about him?'

I didn't answer.

'Okay,' she said. 'We'll just take it as it comes. Is today the day you go up to see him?'

'Today at one.'

She scratched her knee.

'Has that been on your mind?' I said.

'A bit.'

'Any change of heart about my meeting him?'

'No… I guess I'm a little nervous- though why should I be? You'll be dealing with it, not me.'

***

I left the house at twelve-thirty, turned off PCH at the red clapboard buildings of the Malibu Feed Bin, and headed up Topanga Canyon Road, cutting through the palisades.

The drought had stripped the mountains down to the chapparal, but last month's freak rains had brought back some tender buds and the granite was freckled with weeds and wildflowers. Randomly planted eucalyptus appeared on the west side of the road. To the east was a gorge that deepened and darkened as I gained altitude.

There was little to break up the scenery for the first few miles other than an occasional shack or abandoned car. Then a scattering of small businesses appeared among dry, yellow clearings: a lumberyard, a general store and post office, a lean-to advertising magic crystals at discount.

At the top of the road was a fork that separated Old Topanga Road from the newer highway that led into the Valley. Both routes were empty.

The original Topanga settlers had been Californio homesteaders and New England gold panners, asking for little but beauty and riches and privacy. Their descendants still owned land in the canyon, and individualism remained the Topanga way.

During the sixties and seventies- the time of the Sanctum party- the hippies had invaded in giddy droves, living in caves, scrounging for food, and eliciting outrage the natives hadn't known they had in them. Gary Hinman had a house in Topanga back then, as did lots of other musicians, and he was recording rock 'n' roll tracks in his home studio when the Manson family murdered him.

No more hippies now. Most had wandered off, some had died from overdoses of freedom, a few had become transformed to Topanga burghers. But the canyon hadn't turned into Levittown. Artists and writers and others who didn't keep regular hours continued to homestake here, and I knew several professors and psychotherapists willing to brave the hour-plus drive to the city in order to return here at night. One of them, a man who studied the biochemistry of rage, once told me he'd come across a mountain lion in his back yard one night, savaging a raccoon and licking its chops.

'Scared the shit out of me, Alex, but it also took me to a higher spiritual level.'

I turned left onto the old road. The next couple of miles were darker and greener and cooler, shaded by sycamores, maples, willows, and alders that arched over the blacktop.

Pretty, lacy trees.

Houses appeared every hundred to two hundred feet, most of them modest and one-storied and set into vine- crusted glades. Those on the left side of the road sat behind a dry wash, accessible by footbridge or through old railroad boxcars turned into tunnels.

Mine was the only car on the road, and though I could smell horse manure, there were no steeds in sight. I pulled over and read the directions the woman had given me.

Look for a private road around three miles from the bridge, and a wooden sign to the east.

I drove a slow mile. There were several dirt paths cutting into the hillside on the east, all unmarked, and I made a couple of false starts before spotting a wooden sign nearly obscured by a heavy bank of scarlet honeysuckle.

S NC M

The road, if you could call it that, was an acutely slanting dirt path lined with elderberry and ferns and sugar bush. I traveled a thousand feet of kidney-jarring, hairpin solitude. The trees, here, were thick-trunked and hypertrophied, the brush beyond them impenetrable. The growth was so thick that branches scraped the roof of the car, and in some places the vegetation sprouted in the center of the road and brushed the Seville's underbody.

Soon I heard the high-note trickle of a stream. Groundwater. That explained the lushness during the drought. Looking for trees here would be like searching for pedestrians in Times Square.

A couple of turns, then I saw a two-piece gate up ahead. Heavy-duty chicken wire framed by planks of weathered redwood.

Latched, but not locked.

I got out, freed the bolt, and swung both gates open. They were heavy and rusty and left brown grit on my hands.

Another five hundred feet. Another gate, a twin of the first. Beyond it was a big, low-slung, lodge-type building flanked by enormous bristlecone pines and backed by a forest of more pines and firs and coast redwood. The roof was green asphalt shingle, the walls, logs.

I parked in the dirt, between a black Jeep Cherokee and an old white Mercedes convertible. A row of iron