Anonymous Tip: Slutty Lila

A Review Series of Anonymous Tip, by Michael Farris

Pp. 182-183

Today’s section is short, but doesn’t combine well with the text on either end of it, so it’s what you get.

Lila was on duty Friday night at the Ram’s Head. McGuire did not recognize her at first because tonight her hair was jet black. She remembered McGuire from a couple weeks back. A sharply dressed, good-looking guy was etched in her memory forever—or for a month or two, whichever came first.

You know what? I think of all the characters in this book, I may well like Lila best! She doesn’t put up with shit, she’s not engaged in a conspiracy, and Farris dumps on her like she’s the whore of Babylon. I mean for serious—lay off Lila, Farris! What did she ever do to you!? Is working at a bar a crime now? Well and actually, that’s part of the problem—Farris appears to assume that a woman working at a bar must be a sex worker, dontcha know. And even if she was, so what? She’d still be the most honest character by far!

I am clearly getting way too worked up about Farris’s Lila-hate. But seriously.

Anyway, in case you’re wondering, we’re back at the Ram’s Head because Blackburn and Dr. McGuire need to have another meeting, and conspiratorial meetings always go down in seedy bars—duh.

Blackburn sat down without so much as a hello. He pulled a manila folder from his briefcase before speaking.

“This is a copy of your file that lawyer Barron got you to fax straight to the court.”

“So?” McGuire asked.

“So!” Blackburn said sternly. “We are concerned that it may contain some reference to our arrangement on the case.”

McGuire asks Blackburn if he’s read it, and Blackburn explains that he has, but that there’s the issue of the “initials and abbreviations.” Oh, and Blackburn’s ticked off at McGuire in general. At one point he tells McGuire that Peter “destroyed your theory that we paid good money for you to develop.” McGuire objects, but Blackburn is in no mood to listen.

“I’m not going to argue about it. We need to decide whether we are going to appeal this case. And we need to know if anything is going to jump out and bite us from these notes. We’re giving you an assignment. I want a full version for my eyes only. I want a literal, correct, word-for-word translation. Handwritten. No photocopies. One original—that’s it. Then I want a safe version. I want you to make a plausible interpretation of anything in this report that opens us up in any way. Normally you’re a head doctor. Now we’re going to see how good of a spin doctor you are. Make all the copies you want of the second version. Leave them lying in a park for all I care. But I want both versions on Monday. Right here at seven.”

What in the blazes do they think Blackburn was writing in his notes? “Tuesday—took bribe”? I am at an absolute loss as to why anyone would include information about bribes and conspiracy in a psychology patient’s file. That sort of thing goes outside of the file. These are the most sloppy villains I have read about since I watched Mouse Trap. Or was the mouse supposed to be the villain? Either way, you get my point!

As Blackburn gets up to go, McGuire asks for his envelope, and Blackburn tells him he’s not going to get any envelopes until he finishes his assignment.

“You helped mess up this case. Now you’re going to clean it up.”

“I will not be threatened,” McGuire said with indignation.

“Think of it what you will. Just do what I tell you,” Blackburn said coldly. He turned his back and was gone.

And so the conspirators begin to fight amongst themselves. I will say again, and surely not for the last time, that Farris’s choice to make his story’s villains into such motion picture stock characters is bewildering to me.

Anyway, Blackburn may have left, but Lila was still there.

McGuire sat for a long time. Lila continued serving him beer until she actually started to look good to him . . . but not good enough. He walked to the door, hitting the wall only once on his way, and drove his BMW slowly through the housing developments that encroach on the city-side of Moran Prairie and on north to his home.

Farris, goddammit! Leave Lila alone!

I’d like to think that Lila has some big role to play in the end—that she’s going to swoop in and reveal the conspiracy—but honestly, given the way Farris is dumping on her, I increasingly doubt that.

I suppose it’s possible that Lila’s here for good literary reasons. Lila’s slutty and ugly. In many ways she’s the perfect foil to Gwen, who is chaste and hot. She’s the opposite end of the virgin/whore complex from Gwen. But who am I kidding? I find it much more likely that she’s simply here for Farris to dump on than that she’s been put in the story intentionally as a foil for Gwen. What say you?