Free The Starshine Connection by Buck Sanders

prime opportunity to rib his friend slip past undocumented, and out of habit he opted
     for sarcasm: “‘Saturday Night Fever’ really changed your life, didn’t it, Lucius?”
    The Treasury man got a pained expression. His dress would have attracted undue attention in Washington; in Los Angeles he
     was just another pedestrian. “Squat on this, old friend,” he smiled back poisonously. “I see you’re still dressing like a
     cross between a gay lumberjack and a devotee of the Jordache look. Come to think of it, that’s two different descriptions
     of the same thing, isn’t it? Heh.”
    “Are you really wearing a gold disco chain around your neck?” Slayton could not contain his mirth. “Come on, you can tell
     me.” Before Lucius had changed his “look” he had been one of the black-shoes, white-socks crowd that Slayton had written up
     in his brief but pungently worded account of the attire of the Department’s field men.
    “Listen, I’ll make a deal with you,” he said.
    “The mark of a true Hollywood type.”
    “Oh, shut up—look, leave my clothes out of this and I won’t blow how you had hair implants on your chest.”
    “Why, Lucius, you seem piqued.” Slayton was still grinning. He had not seen Lucius Bonnard for almost three years.
    “Let’s put it this way,” Lucius said, as they collected Slayton’s single suitcase at L.A. International’s infamous baggage
     claim. “You managed, in one brief, brilliant move inspired by total stupidity, to bitch up a lead that my boys here have been
     salivating over for months. The addresses of the Starshine people. Jesus hopped-up friggin’ Christ, Ben, why couldn’t you
     have waited?” He lifted Slayton’s suitcase and carried it along for him as they made their attempt to walk through Religion
     Row—the outward-bound breezeway of the airport traditionally jammed with representatives of every crazy sect, cult, following,
     charity, and pseudoreligion known to the diverse madness of the West Coast. Followers scampered forward, proffering literature,
     lectures, scams, nuttiness, and flowers, all for some silly price or other.
    Slayton, like Lucius, had long since learned the only real way to fade by such passive aggression was to think native—they
     never wasted their time with residents. That meant avoiding eye contact. This had an even sillier side effect—Angelenos traditionally
     breezed past the most provocative scenes without apparent notice or comment. The only thing to which they paid actual attention
     on the street would be, say, to a spontaneous gunfight.
    He had also learned his lesson about the generosity of the so-called sciences and religions that had the gall to waste everyone’s
     patience by proselytizing at the airport. He had once accepted a thick book, a treatise on the fundamental basis of some faith,
     thrust below his nose by some equally anonymous Middle Eastern exchange student. As he attempted to walk away with it without
     further comment or any sort of gratuity, he was asked for the book back. Slayton graciously gave him a copy of the free magazine
     he had found inside the folding pocket of the seat before him in first class, deemed it an exchange especially adherent to
     the principals of the faith—the magazine was more entertaining than the book, and he, therefore, was demonstrating the principal
     of self-sacrifice—and continued walking away only far enough to dump the book into a trash bin whose plastic bag was mostly
     full of flat, undrunk Coca-Cola from a snack bar that was at least as big a scam as the religion. He turned and smiled back
     at his benefactor, flashed a peace sign, and was off.
    Pity he could not connect Starshine up with crackpot religions. He ached to put such obvious bunko schemes into proper social
     perspective. That is, bust the hell out of a few of them, dig out some of the dirt he knew they had to be hiding.
    Dealing with them was just a part of Slayton’s acclimation