Vasquez Rocks: Pardons for pitbulls, or ...

By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor

What went before:

Plucky Melba Trousdale lost her boyfriend during an engagement picnic at Vasquez Rocks. He was snatched by a giant tentacle near the set of one of the science fiction action flicks frequently filmed at that location.

The tentacle snapped her boyfriend, Aaron Slingfact, into a pool of greenish-blue light. Somehow, the tentacle seemed a good deal more real than the cheesy movie set.

Seeking help from her ex-brother-in-law, a 6-foot-6, 258-pound bail recovery agent named Gort, Melba rode into the Big Rock Inn.

At the inn, west of Palmdale, but east of Sumatra, Melba and Gort encountered Don Diego Rivera O'Riley, a reputed UFOlogist and sometime shaman.

Just when the trio was getting down to cases to develop a theory on the missing boyfriend, the Antelope Valley's most feared outlaw motorcycle club - the Vegans - showed up, seeking room at the inn to settle a score.

Now the little band of nomads is on the run. Do they call a cop? Do they call the Marines? Inexplicably, they call a reporter.

Chapter 8: Pardon for

a pitbull or mystery

on the mesa?

After an interlude at Don Diego Rivera O'Riley's fortress of solitude, Melba Trousdale and her band of brother fugitives resolved to return to Vasquez Rocks, and reporter Jack Slingfact chugged back to the newsroom on his big bike.

Jack hated returning to the Valley Press empty-handed. In the world of editors Barclay and Drummond, it simply wasn't done. He hadn't been to the planning commission meeting. He could revert to streaming video of the meeting and crib off that, but it was bad form. The meeting itself was a gathering of the citizenry speaking in support or opposition to mesh the two big towns in the Valley to a single entity, making Palmdale and Lancaster into a hybrid auto of a place to be called "Palmcaster." Or, would it be "Landale"?

Slingfact had mixed feelings. He had a girlfriend once who told him reporters had no feelings. That hurt. She said also he didn't pay any attention to her. Of course, he told her she was wrong, but he was too busy thinking about a story to pay much attention. He was a reporter. She was a civilian. Those things never end well.

Jack made his way to his desktop, rounding the M.C. Escher geometry of desks and chairs that made up the news room. When he had arrived at the Valley Press just after the big '94 earthquake, the place had been a dingy warren of desks and smudges. Now, it was a bright, clean warren of desks. Occasionally an editor would do a prairie dog over one of the cubicles and ask, brightly, "What are you working on?"

The question was illegitimate, but the answer was always the same: "Ummm, I'm working on a story."

And then the answer came, sure as war or drought: "Yeah, I know. But could you handle this story about the widow leaving everything to the Chihuahua? ... We kind of need it right now."

Barclay sidled over to Slingfact's cubicle. Slingfact earned the cubicle on account of awards earned for covering the neverending war on crime, and a special award for uncovering that the mayors of three incorporated cities in the Valley contributed to a nonprofit dedicated to research isolating a gene that would prompt facial and eye muscles to coordinate a smile so perfect that re-election was a scientific certainty.

Barclay hovered. He had earned his own berth as managing editor by simply not ever not working. Slingfact considered a grant for research that would guarantee that editors have to sleep, occasionally.

Barclay wiggled a caterpillar of a moustache. His dark eyes looked happy behind trifocals thick enough for Lavrenti Beria.

"Let me guess, Barks, you want to know what I'm working on," Slingfact said.

"I always thought you were psychic, Slingfact."

Slingfact peered at his computer. An intense and devoted attention to the computer often connoted legitimate work product, rather than, say, seeing who's up on Facebook.

"Got the planning commission piece, complete with pitchforks and torches?"

"I'm going to get to it," Slingfact replied, moving some papers on his desk.

"I need you over at City Hall, pretty quick. Someone's giving Mayor Ziggurat a baby pitbull for his birthday, and hizzoner is going to give the pitbull to the 'Pit Bulls R Us' animal rescue. Kind of like pardoning the turkey at the White House. Don't worry, photo has it covered. "

Actually, it was a relief. It deferred execution on a less than stellar performance on the "Palmcaster" story.

"I've got a couple of cop calls to make," Slingfact said. "I heard there was commotion out in Littlerock yesterday."

"Commotion? We love commotion," Barclay said.

"Something that shut down the Pearblossom Highway," Slingfact said. "Road got shut down by the CHP, and somebody popped white smoke, and there was a bodacious vehicle pursuit."

"Gunplay?" Barclay said, eyes gleaming behind the Harry Potter trifocals.

"In fact," Slingfact said. "Automatic weapons fire."

"Well, that's good," Barclay said. "You looked kind of down yesterday and we hoped someone would pull an SUV with a body in it out of the aqueduct just to cheer you up."

"Thanks, Barks. That was thoughtful."

"Just don't want you to get stale. Well, you better go on to the pitbull mercy fest."

Slingfact had mastered the technique of searching database while carrying on a reasonably focused conversation with an editor about the day's third assignment before the evening deadline rush. Three-fourths of the fun of working at the last family-owned independent newspaper in Southern California was that something always came up. Always.

"Just don't miss the pitbull thing," Barclay said. "You never know what the little guy's gonna say."

"The pitbull?"

"No. The mayor."

Slingfact was tapping keys quicker than Keith Jarrett. He had already searched Daily Variety, the Hollywood Reporter. He searched blogs and Web sites. Sometimes it was even more exciting when he didn't find something - if it was supposed to be there. He picked up the phone, punching in a pal who had gone to glory at the Reporter. "Is this Flint?"

"In Like Flint," the Hollywood Reporter guy said.

"Slingfact. I need information about a film shoot for a turkey called 'Revenge of the Gorn.' "

"Like the old 'Star Trek' episode on the asteroid that looks like Vasquez Rocks? My favorite. Kirk makes gunpowder from sulphur on a planet that looks just like Vasquez Rocks. He kills the big lizard with a homemade mortar."

"Half the planets on Star Trek looked like Vasquez Rocks."

"How's life in the desert anyway?"

"Windy," Slingfact said. "The mayor's gonna pardon a pitbull."

"I knew I missed that place," Adam Flint said. "I was happier there."

"That's what you all say, but where are you when I get sent out to the aqueduct and it's 38 degrees?"

" 'Revenge of the Gorn?' "

"Correct."

"I have a shooting calendar of all studio shoots, and most of the independents that are working in L.A. County," Flint said. "Nothing about anything connected to Star Trek, nothing that makes reference to a Gorn."

"You're sure," Slingfact said.

"Nothing on shooting schedules at Vasquez Rocks right now," Flint said. "Nothing the past month, or the month ahead."

"That's a lot of nothing."

"This important, Jack?"

"Could be."

"I'll make a couple of calls. Wonder who'd want to resurrect a guy in a lizard suit with a zipper?"

"You're bound to find a zipper lizard between remakes of 'Bewitched' and 'Gilligan's Island.' "

Jack did his own database search of big aggregators that lifted news copy and called it their own. There were 264,936 references to the zipper lizard, but not one in a current project. Jack shifted his search to the network du jour, Facebook. He found Melba Trousdale. She had 79 friends. That meant she was sociable, but not just a name collector. He looked for keys in her profile that would indicate whether she was nuts.

Melba's Profile: Graduated Quartz Hill High School, Class of '98. Graduated Portland State University, majoring in education studies. Joined National Guard, with Operation Iraqi Freedom service, 2003, 2004.

Jack concluded she joined up probably because she had to clear some school loans, was patriotic and collided with the war. She was a cross-country runner. Yet he knew she barely topped 5 feet, 5 inches. That meant she had heart. There was nothing he could see on her profile to indicate she was a candidate for recovered memory of alien abduction, or planned to begin investing in gold.

He shifted his search, looking for a more recent reference to his cousin, Aaron Slingfact. There was a fragmented reference to a CSAT test, but that was about it. No Facebook. No MySpace. Just the same vanilla cousin from a decade past, the one who busted Jack's favorite Fender guitar and left without offering to pay.

He plucked his bomber jacket from the hook and brushed past Drummond, who had a fistful of story logs in his slightly pudgy hands. Drummond looked up, brushing past.

"Got the planning commission piece?"

"Pitbull birthday," Slingfact said, heading toward the door and the Harley he won in the raffle.

He thought about it for about two seconds, decided to let photo handle the pitbull, and headed down the AV Freeway to Vasquez Rocks, wind in his face.

To Be Continued Sunday, Nov. 8.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Previous Chapters of Vasquez Rocks can be read at avpress.com behind the extraterrestrial icon.