The sun beat down on Santa Monica like an overdose of Vitamin D as I walked along the boardwalk licking an ice cream cone. Before I could get close to finishing it, it had melted like a mannequin in a burning wax museum.

I stopped at Honest John’s hot dog stand for a napkin and some celery juice. Daily habit. Honest John used to be a wrestler, and his little shack was full of pictures of him and former adversaries. Mad Dog Cerrito. Bonehead Gurk. Pimple Hammerfish. Crazy Monk Farrell. Buddy Miles. The Scuzzer. I sipped my celery drink and listened to Honest John reminisce until I got bored. Then I walked down the pier, past Synanon on Ocean Avenue, to the Surfrider Motel where I conked out in front of the TV, trying to remember why I came to this chili dog town in the first place.

It all started with a call from Chick Harper, my ex-partner and still one of the best rhythm sleuths in L.A. Whenever something broke on the coast, Chick was my leg man. If he needed something done in Stink City, he called me, Lucky Demeter.

“Got a hot one, Lucky. There’s a pre-paid ticket at the airport. You’re on the 2:45 to L.A. By the way.. .you know anything about Egyptian history?”

I didn’t know veal picata about Egyptian history. .But then again I hadn’t had a decent case in awhile. Used to be a record company or manager would hire me to investigate the disappearance of one of their stars. Nice work if you can get it, but there ain’t stars like there used to be. Who would pay to find Bachman-Turner Overdrive or Z.Z. Top if they disappeared?

Oh, there used to be stars. My last trip to California, Toot Records hired me to find Johnny Hambone, the flashy Filipino guitar player who used to burn his hair on stage while playing “God Bless America” with the stump of what used to be his right leg before an overexcited groupie severed it with her teeth. Hambone had disappeared after a gig at Redondo Beach one night, and both the record company and Hambone’s manager feared foul play.

I was walking on the beach, sipping a vodka stinger (Zubrowka Polish vodka, ice cold, with red onion) from a paper cup when I found one of Hambone’s monogrammed gold guitar picks in the tide. I suspected he’d been done in. Then I realized the tide was going out, not coming in. The pick was a decoy. Suddenly, a small caliber bullet put a clean hole through my cup of vodka. I took a quick sip through the hole before I hit the sand. There were no more shots.

Eventually, I found Johnny Hambone in Tibet. He’d given up rock ‘n’ roll, hung up his axe, given up the glitter, the groupies and the greenbacks, for meditation with Sri Gef-fen.. .until his option with Toot ran out.

Jeb Magruder, a determined A&R man for Dagger Records, had followed me to Tibet, and offered Hambone the state of New Jersey and two future Miami Dolphins draft choices to sign. Hambone came back, but he wouldn’t plug in. He sang sensitive songs on the sitar about his Tibetan experiences, but only one, “Do the Dalia Lama” came close to penetrating the top twenty. The last I heard, Hambone was tending bar at a whorehouse in Storey County, Nevada.

Chick Harper met me at the airport. We’d been retained by an anonymous source who said only that he was a friend of Ray Manzarek’s. The friend wanted to know if there was some kind of curse on Ray for using the name of the Golden Scarab (Ray’s album’s title), holy jewel of Osiris, the Egyptian fertility god, in vain. The evidence was flimsy. The smog had been heavier than usual, even in Laurel Canyon. There had been three days of riptides on the beach. And the album wasn’t selling.

Chick dropped me at the Surfrider — I could neyer handle that Hyatt House/ Hollywood scene for more than fifteen minutes at a time unless I had to — and rented a ear. I hopped into the cobalt blue Nova, snapped on KHJ, cruised the freeway to Sunset, then up Laurel Canyoh Drive. Winding through the neighborhood, past houses owned by Alice Cooper, Carole King, John Mayall, Joni Mitchell — they say there’s, a gold record for every acre in Laurel Canyon — I stopped at a house with a red sports car with a license plate that read MAU MAO parked outside. I figured I had my man.

The house belonged to Manzarek’s manager, an L.A. street kid known only as “Sugar Man.” He and I had met before, during the Demeter Commission’s Inquiry of Sorts into the Disappearance of Jim Morrison. We’d spent an evening guzzling Bloody Mary’s and shooting pool at Palms, a sleazy bar on Santa Monica Blvd., where Morrison used to go to drink with the “real people” — the gimps, geeks and goners of Hollywood. L£ter, we were on our way to gobble up some jail bait at Rodney Bingenheimer’s when “Sugar Map” went through his nightly ritual of rolling his Pinto. I took a cab home. It was the last I saw of him.

Manzarek stepped away from the piano where he’d been rehearsing. We made some harmless small talk about Los Angeles. “L.A.’s the ultimate American city,” he told me while I bit my lip. “New York’s really a country unto itself. L.A.’s the capital of America. It’s where everybody wants to live, how they want to live.” Manzarek watched me pull on my ear.

“You,” he said, “are spoiled by the intellectual climate of New York.”

I’ve punched out characters for less than that, but I saw a set-up. “Well, it seems to me nobody in L.A. knows how to read.”

“Nobody in America reads much,” Manzarek replied.

Gotcha. “Obviously, you read a lot of books if The Golden Scarab is any indication.”

“That’s one of the downfalls of The Golden Scarab,” Manzarek admitted. “That’s why it didn’t sell the way I thought it would. I thought people would pick, up on it, but nobody’s picking up on it.”

I let Manzarek continue his lament. “I’ve read too much. I have too many ideas. Too many thoughts about universal concepts. I’ve read too much history. The present is where we’re at right now, but whatever we are is based on what happened before. I Ijke to read books, and I try to put what I get out of reading into the lyrics of my music. That was a real big mistake.”

Musically, The Golden Scarab works fine. The Doors-ish keyboard hook is never far from the surface, and the musicians — Tony Williams on drums, Jerry Scheff (of the Presley gang) on bass, and Larry Carlton on guitar — made an innovative setting for some of the most obsolete concepts of 1974. Titles like “The Purpose of Existence Is?” and “Oh Thou Precious Nectar Filled Form (or) A Little Fart” were the sign of a man possessed. Or cursed. Lines of lyrics seemed to be completely at odds with what any reasonable humanist, as Manzarek seemed to be, would write:

We need a leader, we need a master ,

We can’t do it on our own We need a guru, we need a boohoo

We’re afraid of being alone

“Do you really believe we need a leader or guru?” I asked Manzarek.

“No. I don’t think we do. Each man is his own leader, has to make his own rules, and do whatever’s right in his own heart and mind. The thing with people who take on gurus is that they’re looking for that one last father figure before they stand on their own two feet on the planet.”

Then why did he say all that? Manzarek said he does believe in cosmic consciousness and universal thought. “Everybody thinks those things are jokes, but they’re not at all. I take it seriously. I have this vision of life on earth as a possible paradise. That’s why The Golden Scarab didn’t sell — because that’s no longer a valid vision. What’s it all about man, getting stoned? What it’s about for me is taking over the country. That’s what we set out to do in 1965, ’66, ’67, in one form or another. But everybody gave up.”

TURN TO PAGE 75.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31

Manzarek hasn’t given up his optimism, and spoke about political leaders he considers “hopes for the future,” like New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and Oregon’s Governor Tom McCall. But at that point I would just as soon have Roman Polanski slice open my nose as talk Democrats and Republicans. I wanted to talk about the one song on The Golden Scarab that Marizarek didn’t write. Part of the lyric to Chuck Berry’s “Downbound Train” goes: “Found myself asleep on a barroom floor/Drank so much couldn’t drink no more. ..” The story goes on to create a vision of hell as some fearsome alcoholic paradise. It sounded to me like Manzarek was talking about his old pal Jim Morrison.

“That sure does make sense,” Manzarek noted. “Yeah. Definitely. I think it’s just a coincidence. I didn’t plan it; that way, but the interpretation is 100% valid.”

Coincidence? I wasn’t, so sure. “Is Jim dead?”

“I don’t know.” said Manzarek. “I don’t know for sure. I haven’t heard from him in three, years. And that’s been a pretty long time. I assume he’s dead, but I don’t know for sure. I don’t think anyone knows. Probably no one ever will know. Not unless they dig up the coffin, and see if there’s some teeth left in there to identify.,

“But he hasn’t gotten in touch with you?”

“No.”

“And you haven’t tried to get in touch with him, like through seances or other extraordinary means?”

“No.”

There was one public effort to remember. Morrison, though. On July 3, 1974 Manzarek and a few friends had a ‘ “Jim Morrison Memorial Disappearance Party” at the Whiskey A Go Go.

Party” “We did ‘Light My Fire,’ then The Phantom did ‘Riders on the Storm.’ I thought Jim was behind me. Is that you Jim? My wife closed her eyes and swore Jim was on the stage.” What happened next should be in the rock ‘n’ roll Hall

“Then Iggy came on stage. He sang ‘L.A. Woman,’ ‘Maggie McGill,’ and ‘Back Door Man.’ The crowd went fuckin’ bananas man, they just went ke-ray-zee. As soon as Iggy got on stage the whole place was completely electrified. He was wearing black leather pants, and a Jim Morrison t-shirt” [and sporting, I might add, a new surfer haircut]. “Iggy was really on, and really on top of the whole thing. That was the Whiskey like it used to be. A magic moment.”

“Do you ever listen to Raw

“Yeah,” said Manzarek.

“What do think of it?”

you “Pretty raw. Lots of power.”

That concluded that discussion. Chick Harper and I talked about the case over crepes at Puce’s on Pico Blvd. in Santa Monica. Neither of us thought there was a curse on Manzarek for invoking the Golden Scarab, but then it still

again, was possible. “If there was a curse,” said Chick, “there’s one certain way to get rid of

“What’s that?”

“Start a band with Iggy.” We put it in the report and headed for Rodney’s.