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and deskfolk at cop stations around the Southland, and one day they both realized that he ’ d become, what they call de facto, Doc ’ s lawyer.
    Sauncho now answered the phone in some agitation.
    “ Doc! Have you got the tube on? ”
    “ All ’s I get here ’ s a three-minute call, Saunch, they ’ ve got me in Compton, and it ’ s Bigfoot again. ”
    “ Yeah well, I ’ m watching cartoons here, okay? and this Donald Duck one is really been freaking me out? ” Sauncho didn ’ t have that many people in his life to talk to and had always had Doc figured for an easy mark.
    “ You have a pen, Saunch? Here ’ s the processing number, prepare to copy— ” Doc started reading him the number, real slowly.
    “ It ’ s like Donald and Goofy, right, and they ’ re out in a life raft, adrift at sea? for what looks like weeks? and what you start noticing after a while, in Donald ’ s close-ups, is that he has this whisker stubble* like, growing out of his beak? You get the significance of that? ”
    “ If I find a minute to think about it, Saunch, but meantime here comes Bigfoot and he ’ s got that look, so if you could repeat the number back, OK, and— ”
    “ We ’ ve always had this image of Donald Duck, we assume it ’ s how he looks all the time in his normal life, but in fact he ’ s always had to go in every day and shave his beak. The way I figure, it has to be Daisy. You know, which means, what other grooming demands is that chick laying on him, right? ”
    Bigfoot stood there whistling some country-western tune through his teeth till Doc, not feeling real hopeful, got off the phone.
    “ Now then, where were we, ” Bigfoot pretending to look through some notes. “ While suspect—that ’ s you—is having his alleged midday nap, so necessary to the hippie lifestyle, some sort of incident occurs in the vicinity of Channel View Estates. Firearms are discharged. When the dust settles, we find one Glen Charlock deceased. More compellingly for LAPD, the man Charlock was supposed to be guarding, Michael Z. Wolfmann, has vanished, giving local law enforcement less than twenty-four hours before the feds call it a kidnapping and come in to fuck everything up. Perhaps, Sportello, you could help to forestall this by providing the names of the other members of your cult? That would be ever so helpful to us here in Homicide, as well as the chance of a break for you when that ol ’ trial date rolls around? ”
    “ Cult. ”
    “ The L.A. Times has referred to me more than once as a Renaissance detective, ” said Bigfoot modestly, “ which means that I am many things—but one thing I am not is stupid, and purely out of noblesse oblige I now extend this assumption to cover you as well. No one, in fact, would ever have been stupid enough to try this alone. Which therefore suggests some kind of a Mansonoid conspiracy, wouldn ’ t you agree?
    After no more than an hour of this sort of thing, to Doc ’ s surprise, Sauncho actually showed up at the door and started right in with Bigfoot.
    “ Lieutenant, you know you don ’ t have any case here, so if you’re going to charge him, you better. Otherwise— ”
    “ Sauncho, ” Doc hollered, “ will you dummy up, remember who this is, how sensitive he gets— Bigfoot, don ’ t mind him, he watches too many courtroom dramas— ”
    “ As a matter of fact, ” Detective Bjornsen with the fixed and sinister stare he used to express geniality, “ we probably could take this all the way to trial, but with our luck the jury pool ’ d be ninety-nine percent hippie freaks, plus some longhair sympathizer of a DDA who ’ d go and fuck the case all up anyway. ”
    “ Sure, unless you could get the venue changed, ” mused Sauncho, “ like, Orange County might be— ”
    “ Saunch, which one of us are you working for, again? ”
    “ I wouldn ’ t call it work, Doc, clients pay me for work. ”
    “ Were only detaining him for his own good, ” Bigfoot explained.