Free Mourn The Living by Max Allan Collins

a Commie For Christ.
    There were some paperback books in one corner, several ashtrays scattered around, a few blankets by the window. Alongside one wall a radiator spat underneath Dr. Leary’s picture. The air was singed with incense.
    “Irene Tisor,” Nolan said. He looked out the window and watched the Chelsey River reflect the sun.
    “What?”
    “Irene Tisor. Did you know her?”
    The mass of hair nodded yes.
    “What happened to her?”
    “Bad trip.”
    “Bad trip?”
    “A down trip, straight down.”
    “Fell?”
    “I wasn’t there, man. Nobody was there but her . . . and she must’ve not been all there herself.”
    “What’s the word?”
    “Huh?”
    “What do people say about it?”
    “Nothin’ . . . just that Irene thought she could fly. Guess she couldn’t. Bummer.”
    “Was she a friend of yours?”
    “So-so.”
    “How’d you know her?”
    “She hung around the Third Eye. We talked.”
    The Third Eye was a nightclub frequented by Chelsey’s would-be hippie element. The local underground newspaper was also called the Third Eye and the club was its editorial headquarters. Zig-Zag was the sixth person Nolan had spoken to that morning, and all had mentioned Irene as a regular at the Third Eye.
    “What’d she like to talk about?”
    “Life.”
    “Life.”
    “That’s right, man. Philosophy one-oh-one.”
    “What’d she think of it?”
    “Of what?”
    “Life. What’d she think of it?”
    Zig-Zag flashed a yellow grin. “Groovy.”
    Right.
    “Was Irene Tisor one of you?”
    Zig-Zag flashed the grin again. “I give, man. What am I?”
    “Whatever the hell you call it. Hippie.”
    “I’m not a hippie, that’s a label hung on my generation by a biased press!”
    “Flower child, love generation, freak, whatever. Was she one of you?”
    “Well, in spirit, man . . . but in spirit only. There’s a lot of us, we live kind of foot to mouth, know what I mean? We don’t want for much, but hell, we don’t want much.”
    “Irene lived pretty good?”
    “Better than that. She had an apartment, I hear, with that straight Trask chick.”
    “But she was thick with your crowd?”
    “She sympathized. She heard the music, all right, she just couldn’t take her clothes off and dance.”
    “She heard enough to dance off a building.” Nolan walked over to Dr. Leary’s picture. Down the hall somebody was playing a Joan Baez record, and though Nolan didn’t recognize the voice and was no judge of music, he knew what he didn’t like. Nolan ground out his cigarette in Leary’s bleary left eye.
    “Hey, man, what the fuck you doin’, there!” Zig-Zag got up and started toward Nolan, flexing what muscle there was on his skeletal frame.
    Nolan’s mouth became a humorless line. “You’re the love generation, remember?”
    Zig-Zag brushed the ashes off Leary’s face and said, “What is it buggin’ you, man? You come in here all straight and polite, then you get nasty. What’s buggin’ you?”
    “Irene Tisor is dead. I want to know why.”
    Zig-Zag shrugged. “Anybody can pull a bad trip, man.”
    “Wasn’t she a ‘straight,’ like me?”
    “She wasn’t all that straight, man. But I admit I never heard of her taking a trip before this. She got a little high once in a while, blew some pot, all right, but that’s all I ever saw her take on, besides a guy or two.”
    “Did she take you on, Zig-Zag?”
    “Naw, we just shot the shit. But there’s a guy in the band at the Third Eye she saw pretty regular.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Broome. Talks with an English accent, but it’s phony.”
    “Broome. Thanks.”
    Nolan turned to leave, then stopped and said, “Pot cost much around here? LSD and the rest, it sock you much?”
    “Cost of living’s high, man. Somebody’s making the bread in this town.”
    “How about you, Zig-Zag? Your old man, what kind of business is he in?”
    “My old man? He’s a banker.”
    “I see. Where?”
    “Little town north of