Fact1: Shasta tells him about new lover, Fact2: Doc enters only business in developing strip mall, Fact3: Jade leaves message for Doc apologizing for setting him up with police and telling him to beware of Golden Fang, Fact4: Thanks to postcard from Sauncho Doc finds large building shaped like golden fang, Fact5: Bigfoot tells him to search for Puck Beaverton in Chryskylodon
Output: In 1970, Shasta Fay Hepworth visits the beach house of her exboyfriend, Larry Doc Sportello, a private investigator and hippie in Gordita Beach, Los Angeles County. Shasta tells him about her new lover, Michael Z. Mickey Wolfmann, a wealthy real estate developer. She asks Doc to help prevent Mickeys wife and her lover from having Mickey abducted and committed to an insane asylum. Doc meets with Tariq Khalil, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family. Khalil hires Doc to find Glen Charlock, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood he met in jail, who now owes him money and is one of Wolfmanns bodyguards. Doc visits Mickeys Channel View Estates project and enters the only business in the developing strip mall, a massage parlor, where he meets an employee, Jade. Doc searches the premises for Charlock, but he is hit with a baseball bat and collapses. He awakens outside, lying next to Charlocks dead body and surrounded by policemen. Doc is interrogated by Det. Christian F. Bigfoot Bjornsen of the LAPD, and learns that Wolfmann has disappeared. He is helped by his attorney, Sauncho Smilax, who arranges for his release by the LAPD. Doc is hired by former heroin addict Hope Harlingen, who is looking for her missing husband, Coy. She was told that Coy was dead, but she believes he is alive because due to a large deposit to her bank account. Coy seeks out Doc and says he is hiding at a house in Topanga Canyon. In a second meeting, he reveals he is a police informant and fears for his life, only wanting to return to his wife and daughter. Jade leaves a message for Doc, apologizing for setting him up with the police and telling him to beware of the Golden Fang. He meets her in an alley, where she explains that the Golden Fang is an international drug smuggling operation. Doc talks to Sauncho, who gives him information about a suspicious boat called the Golden Fang and tells him that, the last time the ship sailed, it was with Shasta on board. Thanks to a postcard from her, Doc finds a large building shaped like a golden fang and meets dentist Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd. Bigfoot calls Doc and tells him that Blatnoyd has just been found dead with fang bites in his neck. Bigfoot decides to help Doc about Coy and tells him to search for Puck Beaverton in Chryskylodon, an asylum run by a cult connected to the Golden Fang. There, Doc finds Mickey, who is being watched by the FBI. Mickey tells Doc he felt guilty for the negativity his realestate business has caused and wants to give away his money. He appears to be a happy member of the cult. When Doc returns home to his beach house, he is greeted by Shasta, who has returned and is indifferent to the trouble her disappearance has caused. She confesses to being on a threehour tour and that she was brought along as inherent vice. She and Doc have sex. Penny, an assistant district attorney with whom Doc was having a fling, provides him with confidential files from which he learns that the loan shark Adrian Prussia is paid by the police department to kill people for them and that one of his victims was Bigfoots former partner. Prussia is tied to the Golden Fang and Doc learns that Glen Charlock was involved with a deal, which is how he ended up dead. Doc visits Adrian, noticing his obsession with baseball bats, but is abducted and drugged by his partner Puck. He manages to escape, killing both Puck and Adrian. Bigfoot appears and rescues him but after being driven home by Bigfoot, Doc learns that he has been set up: Bigfoot has planted heroin in his car. Doc arranges for the drugs to be returned to the Golden Fang in exchange for Coys freedom. Doc and Shasta ride in a car going to an unknown destination.