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1 Psych Out by G.Aldrich Version 2.2 / June 18, 2015 2 Chapter 1 Just south of downtown San Francisco, below the tangle of freeways that carve the sky into twisted triangles, in the more humble underbelly of the city, on the corner of Hicks Street and Industrial Alley, a small but determined little hotel stands above the squalor of the surrounding small factories, metal shops, garages, and sheds. Three floors of apartments, above a ground floor with restaurant and bar, make it at least a story above the buildings in its immediate vicinity. Over the doorway, a large, vertical neon sign, which has not worked for 24 years, proclaims it in large block letters to be the "Good Times Hotel." Originally, it had been the Hoover Hotel, but since the name "Hoover" had been repellent to the politics of the owner at the time of the change, who, since he was of French descent, had renamed it "L'hôtel du Bon Temps," which means "The Good Weather Hotel." A later owner, inadequately schooled in French, had altered it to "The Good Times Hotel." The weather, although temperate, was not its major drawing card, so the idea of having a good time was much more attractive. Besides, the denizens of the bar and restaurant below had no greater knowledge of French, and accepted the altered name, although a few had grudgingly favored the foreign sound of the old one. At any rate, these changes had occurred during the first two decades of the hotel's existence, and all memory of them had been forgotten. The name changes had also predated the erection of the neon sign, which, for better or worse, officially proclaimed it forever to be the "Good Times Hotel," at least until the next act of God or the ultimate descent of a wrecking ball. * * * Lars Svensen sat back in his chair and looked out at the bleak cityscape of cement and glass that stared blindly back at him from every direction. His face reflected the craggy concrete of the factory buildings below. It showed a young toughness, born of tennis courts, Olympic swimming pools, and the slopes of the Sierras, tempered with Golden Glove championships and bar-room brawls. His tempestuous thirties were turning into fiery forties, but those fires burned more slowly and wisely. He had learned from earlier years the importance of pulling his punches, of making mind matter. His thoughts were as gray as the day outside, the sun a ghostly white disk swimming in the billows of fog still spilling in from the ocean five miles to the west. He remembered how much he and his old gang had liked the place when they had first moved in. Now, except for the hired help and a much-diminished gang, he was on his own. It was only two months since he had last used George Anderson to track down the rest of his former accomplices and retrieve the fortune they had run off with, leaving him with no share at all. Now all but one of them were dead, and Svensen was sitting pretty with all their shares - a cool ten million stashed away in his safe. It was time now to begin the next phase of his career. "Mr. Svensen?" He turned in his chair to face the woman who suddenly appeared at the door to his office. "A gentleman is here to see you," she announced, rousing him from his private musings. 3 A tall, thin man stood slightly behind her, clad in a pale gray, well fitted suit. There was a slight stoop to his manner, as if apologizing for his stature. His eyes, behind thick lenses, burned with a strange intensity, lighthouses in a sea of uncertainty. He held his hand out in a timid, but resolute fashion. "Dr. Moritz, I presume,"said Lars, as he rose to take his guest's hand, offering him the visitor's chair. "I trust you had no difficulty finding your way here." "None at all, none at all," said his visitor, "although I've never been in this part of town before. He sat down while he removed his spectacles and wiped the lenses carefully with his pocket handkerchief. He put them on and looked around approvingly. "Nice place you have here," he said. "You had this penthouse built yourself? I love the octagonal shape. Great view as well. Too bad there isn't more to see." "You're right," said Lars with a wry grin. "It's the factory part of town. A little sun might help, though. No, the previous owner had this room built for his meditations. Architecture was always a hobby of mine, however, and, because of its shape, this penthouse was an attraction to me. I like to sketch buildings." He gestured at the drawing board off to the right. "Even with no sun, there's always a lot of light up here." His guest nodded in agreement, looking around. "Quite a collection of movies," he said, glancing around at the low shelves that rimmed the room, tightly packed with the shiny spines of video tapes. "Mostly crime films," said Lars. "Picking up pointers?" asked the doctor with a glint in his eye. "Quite a few," said Lars with a smile. "Mostly things not to do. But ways to be, ways to behave. Be polite. Give everybody a nice smile. Don't brag about what you do. Don't threaten, just be cool, be a gentleman, but at the same time scare the shit out of your enemy, like Joe Don Baker in Charley Varrick, or Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death. There's a lot of reality in some of those old flics," he said, looking fondly around at his collection, "like in Goodfellas or The Godfather, or just plain funny, like in Dog Day Afternoon. Without crime, there'd be no world as we know it. Just a lot of fucking farmers. Crime movies proved one thing, that everybody has a secret desire to be a criminal. Look at the popularity of The Sopranos." "Perhaps I could avail myself of your film collection at the new house?" said Dr. Moritz. "Certainly," said Lars. "It might be fun, sitting around with my new gang watching some old crime films. The only films my old gang wanted to watch were porno flicks." "They watched them up here with you?" "God, no. This was my refuge. Just like the previous guy." "Who also used this room for his meditation. You said he was Chinese?" "Yeah, he's the same guy I got George from." "Really? Excellent - two birds with one stone. "Is George Chinese as well?" "No. I think George is Martian. But Sam was Chinese. Like I was telling you, I used to see him down at the track, and he was doing too well on his bets to believe, so I pushed him into letting me in on his secret. I tried for some time to buy George from him, but he was too smart to sell the golden goose. "But he was getting old, and he finally decided to retire in Hong Kong. His wife's idea. She still had relatives there. He hadn't been back there for forty five years and couldn't care less. But that's married life. You ever been married, doctor?" 4 "Only once, and, mercifully, briefly. So go on about your business arrangement." "So he made me a deal on the whole lot. The whole kit and kaboodle. Bar, restaurant, hotel, cook. and George. The cook, Arcadia, is the lady who let you in. There used to be a manager, but I had to let him go." "So did you try to run the place by yourself?" "No way. Without a liquor license, it's just a restaurant, and I'd have to have had it completely rebuilt and get it through all the rat inspections. One of the conditions of sale was that Sam got to sell the license to another guy looking to open up a bar in the neighborhood. I just wanted the place for my headquarters. As soon as I took over, I closed the restaurant and got rid of the tenants, but I kept the cook, Arcadia, partly because of her Cajun cooking, but more importantly as a kind of nurse for George. His mother had passed away some years earlier, and he obviously needed a woman to look after him. Arcadia says she's not the motherly type, but I have a private opinion that all women have a built-in ability to act as mothers. Don't tell my girlfriend I told you that. Dr. Moritz nodded as if with slight, but understanding approval. He removed his glasses once again, for what seemed to be another cleaning. Lars took this as an encouragement for him to continued. "Anyway," he went on, "it made an ideal hangout for a good five years. Back when I had a gang. It was fun at the start. We frosted the inside of the windows in the bar and restaurant so we could use the place for a headquarters, have a little privacy. We had a proper hangout, close to the freeways, in the middle of a virtually empty neighborhood, with no inhabitants on the streets. No children playing. Not even any vagrants or dogs. Just beat-up old auto repair shops. At night there's only the roar of the city. Too bad I can't advertise it in Craig's List under 'ideal gang headquarters.'" An easy silence fell upon the two, the feeling of agreement and common purpose bringing into their interchange a pleasant camaraderie, the sense of honor among thieves.