I’m Tommy Dougan. Vietnam vet, survivor of things I probably shouldn’t have survived, and staff writer for The LA Wave: Riding the Tide of Change — an underground paper nobody reads.
I review records, movies, and the occasional protest rally while trying not to think too hard about why I’m still alive when better men aren’t.
Then a girl turns up dead in an alley off the Strip, her eardrum burned out from the inside.
And I recognize what killed her.
I recognize it because I heard it once in Vietnam.
Right before everyone around me died.
Now Club 666 is opening on Sunset. The owner says the occult angle is just atmosphere. Great for business. Relax. He’s probably right. I’m probably crazy. The VA has paperwork supporting that theory.
But I came to Los Angeles, looked up at a David Bowie billboard over Sunset Boulevard, and decided this was the only place on Earth worth being.
So here I am.
Stuck in the middle of my own TV Movie of the Week: starring a broken, possibly unhinged record reviewer who can’t decide whether he keeps finding evil because he’s meant to stop it—
—or because somehow, he’s the reason it keeps showing up.
