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com
OceanofPDF.com
The author wishes to express his gratitude to Henry Flesh for his support,
and for recognizing the truth behind the horror.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the
product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
©2002, 2008 Matthew Stokoe
eISBN-13: 978-1-617-75009-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-53-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007939757
All rights reserved
Akashic Books
PO Box 1456
New York, NY 10009
[email protected]
www.akashicbooks.com

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 For Richard
Let this be your howl at the world
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Epilogue

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 Introduction
Matthew Stokoe’s High Life was the first book to be published in the Little
House on the Bowery series back in 2002. In fact, this brilliant and
ferocious novel not only epitomizes the kind of work I’ve intended to
support and celebrate with the imprint; it is exactly the kind of book that I
suspect most people knowing my own interests and published work would
expect to appear in a project operating under my editorial standards. In
truth, High Life is the only Little House on the Bowery book to predate my
taking over the reins of the series. Perhaps for that reason, and despite the
novel’s obvious connections to the imprint’s tastes and mission statement,
High Life has always been the kind of black sheep of the series by default—
a situation now rectified by this official relaunching of the book
accompanied by all the bells and whistles that Akashic Books and Little
House on the Bowery can manage.
Still, a more important reason for trying to draw people’s attention to
the book once again is that, for reasons having possibly to do with the ever-
expanding conservatism with which the arbiters of contemporary literary
tastes delegate their gold stars, or possibly due to the fact that at the time
Stokoe’s novel was originally released there was not yet the kind of
widespread critical and public support for independent publishing that there
is today, High Life’s life has been an unjustly low-key one for the past six
years. This is especially strange when you consider that Stokoe’s first novel,
the enormously disturbing and transcendently clever Cows (1999), a
literally eviscerating portrait of life among the British lower classes, is
revered internationally as one of the most daring English-language novels
of the past few decades.
High Life, in which Stokoe lends even more of his genius to what would
seem to be a far more immediate and topical subject—the darkest of the
dark sides of Hollywood’s TV and movie business—is almost certainly the
more horrifying and yet completely entertaining of the two novels. Its
relative obscurity flies in the face of what I am positive is its future status as
one of the most unstinting, imaginative, brutal, and original contemporary
novels ever written about the punishments that come with the prioritization
of fame. If anything, the recent slavering, apocalyptic media coverage that
added its own special tortures to the collapsing lives of Britney Spears and
Lindsay Lohan and gleefully sexed up the lonesome death of Heath Ledger
has legitimized what only a few years ago seemed like severe imaginative
leaps by Stokoe. The fact that High Life isn’t regularly mentioned in the
same breath with classic, transgressive social satires like American Psycho
and Fight Club is a mystery and an injustice that I sincerely hope the book’s
rebirth, in combination with new attention from unsuspecting readers and
critics, will quickly revise into a weird and ugly memory.
Dennis Cooper
Los Angeles
March 2008

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 Chapter One
A hot rain blew in from the sea. It hit Ocean Avenue in sticky washes of
reflected neon that took the colored light from the hotels and stores and ran
it into the gutters with the trash. In Palisades Park a fat tramp stood staring
down at something by his feet. The way he held his head made him look
like a hanged man. He swayed slightly and I imagined a rope stretching
from his neck to the sky. I pulled over, wondering if he’d found what I was
looking for.
It was hard to see clearly, the sodium spill from the streetlights didn’t
make it very far across the corridor of parkland, and the outline of the
tramp’s bulk was broken by the drifting shadows of hibiscus bushes. I
squinted, wiped rain from my eyes, and saw him stamp his foot. A shower
of golden drops erupted from the ground. I relaxed—the moron was
standing in a puddle, making his reflection explode. Each time the surface
settled he did it again, like he didn’t want to see what was there. Maybe it
was some symbolic destruction of self. Maybe he thought it looked pretty.
To me it was just sad. Not because his behavior was particularly aberrant,
but because it was too easy to picture myself taking that final small step out
of the mainstream and into a world where puddles held secrets that could
make you stand still in the rain.
I looked beyond the tramp, deeper into darkness, and saw bodies. But
they were all alive, or what passed for alive on this nighttime strip of
California. They lay under the shelter of trees or beneath benches, wrapped
in cardboard and plastic sheeting, searching for a blank hour of rest. The
longer I looked, the more of them I saw—patches of shadow dissolving into
cursing human forms that fought their own bones in an effort to find some
impossible position of ease. Occasionally a cigarette glowed orange against
the glass of a wine bottle.
These homeless people, these drunkards and junkies, these fucked-out
hookers and runaway teenagers, these excons and cons in waiting—all of
them patinated with the violence of their despair—lived out entire lives on
this dog-shitted margin of grass. Lived and drank and fixed and fucked
here, and wondered what they might have been if things had been different.
Yeah, fuck.
A small, final step.
It doesn’t take much.
I pulled away from the curb, slow-wheeling south. Wipers on interval,
curtains of rain sucking up sound. The car felt safe, a padded steel cage
insulating me from the rest of the city.
On my right, thirty feet below the edge of the park, Santa Monica pier
stuck into the ocean like a thorn. Its burger stands were closed and the
carousel was dead, but lights still burnt along its length, throwing an
unpleasant nimbus of useless wattage into the wet night air.
No sign of her.
I U-turned and cut right into Santa Monica Boulevard. Stupid to expect
she’d be down here on a night like this anyway.
It was late enough for the traffic to be light, sometime around three A.M.
I smoked and drove one-handed through the long spaces between drifting
red taillights. On either side of me buildings advertised themselves—pie
houses, motels, office blocks, low-level thirties deco to millennium mirror
glass. Packed close at the beach, they relaxed and stretched out somewhere
past Lincoln, losing height as real estate prices fell.
Santa Monica. SaMo. User-friendly L.A. Shining malls, chichi cafes,
Third Street Promenade with its ivy dinosaurs and high-concept restaurants.
All of it a plan for the way everyone with money wanted everywhere to be.
My eyes burned. Last night had been the same—trawling the streets,
totally fucked but unable to sleep, cursing Karen and cursing myself and
cursing our whole fucking life together. She’d disappeared plenty of times
before, but I had a feeling about this one.
Eight days and counting. I didn’t know what it meant.
But I had a feeling …
Santa Monica blurred into West L.A.—no markers, no separate identity.
Too late for the drag, business there was so desperately urgent it burnt itself
out around two A.M. But there was a chance she’d try for a drunk outside
one of the clubs on the strip.
Hollywood here I come.
 The dash lights glowed comfortable and orange. I wanted to believe
what they said, that everything was running smooth and correct. I wanted
to, but I didn’t. She’d been gone too long.
I concentrated on driving and tried not to think.
The rain stopped.
Century City looked as sterile at night as it did by day—office towers and a
mall and nothing human. Twenty stories up, behind the spotless glass,
massive amounts of money brooded, waiting for the employees of Warner
and Fox and Sony to pick up where they left off the day before and continue
channeling it into foot-age of other people’s lives. This was where the
dreams of the planet’s population were given life—not in the screenwriter’s
mind, not in the studios of Burbank or the Amblin offices over in Universal
City Plaza, but in the machinery that made the green-light money available.
Dreams. The Dream Factory. Most people thought its product was a
form of entertainment, maybe a pointer to fashion or lifestyle. Most people
went home from the movies and said, “Wow, that was great. Man, that guy
is so cool, that chick is so sexy, that house was so big, did you see that
fucking car? But, shit, it’s only a film … That ain’t life.”
But I knew better. I knew that it was, and that films were windows into
reality, not distortions of it—views of the only worthwhile way to live.
Everything else was a river of shit.
Movie stars gazed down from their billboards, ten times as big as
anyone else, ten times as real—the only people who counted for anything.
If there was a god, these were the children he loved the most.
I crossed into Beverly Hills. The streets were wide and quiet and
lacquered with the rain’s aftermath. Tall palms doubled themselves in wet
reflections along the perfect edges of perfect roads, and in the gardens of
mansions on the flats soft lighting turned foliage gentle and friendly. No
shit here, these people lived in a film.
A stretch greased past on the inside, long and polished, one of its black
glass windows down. Inside a flawless dark-haired man spoke on a mobile,
two implant-blondes pressed close. Billboard people—the colors of their
clothes and bodies more intense than mine, their forms more sharply
delineated in the golden cabin-light. Unlike the white-trash-slope-nigger-
spic masses that made up the greater part of L.A., they meant something to
people other than themselves.
Money is part of the architecture of the city and mostly you learn to
coexist, blinkered in self-defense to the reality of its beauty. But there are
times when it won’t be ignored, when it rears up and jams itself in your face
and makes sure you haven’t forgotten that it’s all still there—a passport, a
reward, a validation that some people, certain people, can just reach out and
pick up.
And as I watched the limo, as I watched its taillights slide deep into the
night ahead, full of mystery and purpose, all I wanted in the world was to be
inside it with those people, gliding to whatever marble-lined, seafront
palace they were headed for. To be their equal, to own a similar or greater
amount of possessions.
To live life as it should be lived.
But I was a thousand light-years away.
So …
Cut north on Fairfax, right at Sunset, and head on into the strip.
They say it was better in the seventies, but I was five years old and
somewhere else.
Flashy fronting, famous names in light bulbs—The Roxy, The Viper
Room, Whiskey a Go Go. A place where Johnny Depp and Dan Ackroyd
and plenty of others made a hobby of playing host to a tight community of
friends. A place for River Phoenix to die and for plaid-jacketed, out-of-state
conventioneers to get ripped and score some pussy. Karen had milked it for
plenty in her time. Whoring in front of tourist attractions worked, the
patrons had money to spend and an excuse for being away from home.
Outside entrances to clubs, dissolute knots of temporary Californians
tried to argue their way past doormen for a last drink, or stood around
thinking of home and waiting for cabs. The earlier rain had killed whatever
action there might have been at the ass end of this midweek night and the
street was pretty much deserted. If sex was selling at all, it was doing
agency business—phone calls and taxi rides to hotel rooms and private
houses.
I carried on, took Fairfax north and the most famous street in the world
east—Hollywood Boulevard.
 When the stars were still black and white it must have been clean and
relaxed and bursting with its own desirability. Coleman and Flynn and
Crawford and all the others had made America a hit with the world, and the
crowds clamoring outside the Chinese Theater to see them participated in
this success by proxy. Back then the country was a place where anything
that wasn’t American wasn’t good enough, and where individual
achievement reflected on the entire population.
Predawn in the last quarter of the nineties, the boulevard was a flashing,
anxiety-ridden nightmare. The restaurants that once captured the nation’s
imagination as backdrops for celebrity trysts had long ago made way for T-
shirt stores and sunglasses emporiums. The handprints had spit in them and
the brass stars were spotted with gum. And if success was ever rash enough
to take a trip down from the hills, the industry made sure it was too well-
armored to ever share itself around.
But it was still Hollywood Boulevard. Still the draw card, the iceberg
tip of the Californian legend that shone out to small towns across the world,
ruining whatever complacency they had won from the past with the notion
that there was, without doubt, somewhere more exciting to live.
Sometimes Karen came here to score or to hang out. Or to look for rich
out-of-towners to sugar daddify for a couple of days. But it was too late and
too dangerous now. I should have started searching hours ago, but the ocean
had kept me—I’d had a feeling she’d turn up in one of the picnic huts on
Venice Beach, spliffing and drinking with whoever she could find to keep
her company. Now I felt stupid for wasting my time.
The drag wasn’t far from the boulevard, I could have checked it on the
off chance, but I’d had enough. Karen would have to haul her ass home
from wherever it was herself.
The drive back to Santa Monica was blank. My eyes felt charred and the
cigarettes had eaten into my throat. I bought a cold coke from a machine
outside a motel and chugged it until my eyes watered. Coke and damp night
air, and the slowed pulse of the city around me. For that moment, for that
snapshot, micron-thin slice of time, I was free of the past, free even of the
present—just the sweet caustic singe in my mouth and the loose quietness
of being up and alone when most people were asleep.
 Five minutes later, back on the road, the sugar and caffeine kicked in
and perked me up a little. But there was nothing to look at, so I ran Calvin
Klein perfume commercials in my head.
Around Franklin I started taking notice of things again. Santa Monica
Boulevard was clear down its last long sweep to the ocean and I was glad
not to have the hassle of dealing with other drivers.
My back ached, I pressed it into the seat. The upholstery felt good
against my shoulders. The wheel felt good in my hands. Honda Prelude,
five years old, low mileage, not a scratch. Not a Porsche, but I wasn’t
complaining. I was lucky to have a car at all.
A month back, after my uninsured Ford had been stolen, my only
chance of getting back into the personal transport loop had been the bus,
double shifts, and the hope I’d get enough cash together before the hours or
some crazy on the backseat killed me. Karen could have kicked in, but I
didn’t ask her. By then we were way past the stage where she contributed to
community property—everything she got hooking went to drugs and
partying. Besides, a car didn’t mean much to her, she didn’t have a license.
Turned out, though, I’d written her off too soon. Turned out she felt the
need to indulge in a single, inexplicable act of generosity.
Ocean Avenue, an hour before dawn. Inland a runtish light was starting to
seep into the sky, outlining a few of the clouds that had brought last night’s
rain. Too late for sleep now. I figured, check the park again and maybe the
beach below it, then back to Venice for a shower and something chemical
before go-time at Donut Haven.
But it didn’t work out like that.
As I was passing the camera obscura I heard a siren. A couple of
seconds later, a paramedic vehicle pumped by on the inside in a sudden
compression of light and sound. It hung level for a few yards then cut into
my lane and pulled ahead.
There was no reason for this ambulance to mean anything more to me
than the hundreds of others I’d seen since I arrived in the city, but after it
gained a quarter mile and I saw where it was headed, I had a bad feeling I
wasn’t going to be able to dismiss it as part of someone else’s horror.
Activity on the edge of the park, about opposite where San Vicente cuts
off inland. A couple of police cars were already there, turning the street into
a movie set with their roof lights. Dark shapes of people moved around,
silhouetted against the blue-and-red glare. The foliage back from the street
rippled under the sweeping colors like there was a high wind blowing
through it.
The paramedics slowed, curved across the oncoming lanes, parked next
to the cops, and added their lights to the rest.
I had an urge to turn around, to head home and escape knowing what it
was that had brought this group of emergency vehicles together on a
parkland bluff at the western edge of a country of 350 million people. But I
didn’t. I had to know if they’d found what I’d been looking for all night.
I left the Prelude a little way north of the commotion and walked back.
This was the shitty end of the park where the tramps came to dump and
screw—a ravined and collapsing patch of dirt without sidewalk that sloped
toward the cliffs in a shallow network of gullies and depressions. There
weren’t many trees, but low bushes grew densely over much of the area,
nourished by scraps of junk food and the droppings of withered bowels.
A small crowd of rejects from the park and early-morning joggers had
gathered along the roadside and were craning their necks, trying to see into
a gully that ran from the edge of the road, back into the park about five feet
below ground level. They weren’t having much luck. The police had the
scene locked down. They’d run a horseshoe of yellow tape around the gully
and strung sheets of blue plastic between a couple of bushes to block the
view from the street. Going for a side angle farther up or down Ocean
Avenue wasn’t much use either. The depth of the gully and the bushes that
grew along both sides of it made viewing pleasure an impossibility.
Flashlight beams flitted about behind the plastic sheeting, throwing the
shadows of cops against it—hunched shoulders, hands rising and falling
with cigarettes. Whatever had dragged them here at this hour was probably
lying at their feet, and, as the paramedics were sitting on the step at the back
of their van drinking coffee from a thermos flask, it was also probably dead.
I stood for a little bit with the other people, listening to conversations,
hoping for information. Nobody knew what had happened, but they all
knew what that yellow tape meant. And they knew if they waited long
enough something would come out in a bag. But that was no good to me. I
wouldn’t be able to see the face.
 The alternative was simple enough. The cops had a couple of men
making sure no one got too inquisitive, but they were only guarding the
street edge of the scene. So … a quick walk twenty yards south, cut into the
brush, and circle back deep enough into the park to hit the gully somewhere
on the other side of the plastic sheeting. It took a while because I had to
crawl in a lot of places to keep my head below shrub level and because I
had to concentrate on avoiding turds. But I made it eventually, right up to
the tape, the last ten yards on my belly. I got a good view through a gap
between two bushes.
The gully had been reinforced with concrete to make a trough for a
storm drain outlet. A shallow stream of water spilled from the mouth of a
large pipe and made rills around the shoes of four cops who were standing
in a group telling jokes. All of them were in uniform and didn’t seem too
bothered about the thing on the ground. I figured they were killing time
until the detectives showed.
The thing on the ground …
It was much worse than I’d expected.
I lay there and watched the water wash against it for a while, then I
inched back the way I’d come.
Away from where my dead wife lay.
Back on the street. The leaves in the park went copper-red as the sun
rose, and the sky started moving through a spectrum of pastels toward its
daily trademark blue. The policemen were still telling jokes and their
laughter carried well on the warming air. It came in snorts, like animals
grunting.
I drove to Venice as the world woke up.
The picture in my head was pornographic in detail.

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 Chapter Two
Speedway runs parallel to Ocean Front Walk, one block back. The
beachfront buildings are several stories high and the only time you can see
the ocean is when you pass a cross street. Away from the commercial fronts
on the beach the houses and apartment blocks are funkily shabby and sun-
bleached and dusted with salt. It isn’t a ghetto, but you don’t see too many
photo teams from Architectural Digest setting up.
Venice has a reputation for being wacky and fun and full of
counterculture freaks. But like Sunset Strip and Hollywood Boulevard, a lot
of this is just PR to drag the tourists in. What Venice really is is a lot of
different places. Bohemia for artists, rich pickings for the renovation-mad
people they used to call yuppies, a place of sandy roots for the old folks
who’ve been there forever, a carefully dressed-down place to have a pad if
you’re on the way to celebrity. And it’s cool to watch the women
rollerblading on the weekends.
For me, when I moved there, it had held the scent of possibility, of
potential. The colors—the blue ocean, the white walls and red roof tiles—
the soft air, the unexpected lushness of the vegetation, all that space on your
doorstep, stretching out across the water to China, had all been ingredients
I’d mixed into a metaphor for my future—optimism, bright light,
movement, success.
I’d lived there two years and all of it had been unhappy.
I parked the car between two garbage dumpsters and just sat—windows
tight, engine off. I felt zoned, separated from all human babble and activity.
A riot could have broken out around me and I wouldn’t have seen it. The
only thing I was looking at right then was what had been in the park.
I’d recognized Karen instantly, though of course she’d been very much
changed.
Faceup, laid out as heavy and awkward as all the corpses on TV. I’d
always imagined a real dead body would impact on the senses more
violently than the slumped and spattered actors in cop shows. But Karen
had seemed robbed of color, even of some amount of substance, compared
to those nightly small-screen copyings.
She was naked, too, sports fans. Legs spread, one arm crossing her chest
below her breasts, the other flung straight out to the side. Her eyes were
closed, but her belly was open—sliced from sternum, through navel, to a
couple of inches above her pubic bone, then T’ed there with a horizontal
stroke to make flaps of her abdominal wall. It looked like the left flap had
had a piece cut out of it.
I stayed in the car a long time trying to work out how I felt. In the end I
gave up, my ambivalence was insurmountable. Instead, I thought about how
easy it must have been to dump her—just pull up, open the door, and give
her a shove, she’d disappear from view immediately. And how she must
have looked as she fell, her legs falling loosely apart.
After that I figured I should hold a picture of her face in my mind, it
seemed to be what people on TV did when they’d just lost someone. But the
only picture that came to me was of water running between her legs over
the wet concrete of the drain.
The apartment was the apartment. As it always was. Second floor in a
poorly stuccoed fifties block. One room with a bed and a couch, kitchen and
bathroom off it.
The place smelled stale. I could have opened a window for air, but that
would have meant letting the world in, and this was one Venice morning
when I needed to shut it down.
I fired up the VCR and ran last night’s edition of 28 FPS, a weekly late-
night movie-gossip show, pumped out by a small cable station. The
presenter was a punky blond chick called Lorn. She didn’t care much about
the actual movies people made, but she went all out for the people
themselves—the actors, directors, producers, anyone rich and connected to
the industry. Relationships, money, houses, cars, practices and preferences,
addictions and detoxifications—she was jacked on all of it. I never missed a
show.
Robert Downey Jr. was having hassles over drugs and guns and Don
Johnson had broken his ankle. On a lighter note, Ray Liotta and Michelle
Grace were engaged, Mickey Rourke and Carre Otis had been spotted
looking totally cool in New York, and Goldie Hawn was in London for the
premiere of The First Wives Club. At Heathrow Airport she wore a cute
black see-through number that gave a fetching glimpse of her nipples. Back
in L.A. at House of Blues, Noah Wyle and Anthony Edwards were hanging
out at some MTV gig. Anna Nicole Smith was writing the story of her life
and George Clooney had gotten pissed off over intrusive TV journalism.
The tape finished. I wanted to run another one, but I couldn’t
concentrate—thoughts were starting to break through.
My wife of a year was dead and I hadn’t told the police she was mine.
Anyone else would have burst through that tape shouting incoherently
about wife and relationship and Oh My God …
But not me.
And it wasn’t like I could brush it off with the knowledge that they
would be coming around to the apartment anyhow. Because they wouldn’t.
She hadn’t used her married name since the novelty of it wore off a few
weeks after the ceremony, and she’d never converted any of her ID to my
name or address. And getting a make on her from someone around where
she was found was unlikely; no one knew her in Santa Monica—she hung
out almost exclusively in West L.A. and Hollywood. Even if they did find
someone who recognized her, the chance of me being located was still
almost zero. We lived separate lives, she never brought her friends back to
the apartment. As far as the world at large was concerned, there was very
little connection between us. And anyhow, what was one more dead whore
to Los Angeles?
We met in a bar. I’d been in L.A. about a year and I wasn’t making much of
a success of it. Beyond evening courses in telehosting, held in small private
soundstages whose only business was evening courses, I hadn’t integrated. I
knew how to hold my head so shadows didn’t form in my eye sockets, I
could read an autocue and I could keep a smile in place, I could project that
flawless, unflagging vitality so important to holding an audience. But
plugging myself into the city just wasn’t happening and my contact with the
general population didn’t rise much above sitting on a stool in a bar with a
beer in front of me.
I’d come west shackled with the usual dream of making a lot of money
fast then spending the rest of my life in the sun enjoying it. But it hadn’t
happened. In the absence of being mythically rags-to-riches discovered by
some part of the media industry, an unskilled thirty-year-old tends to be
channeled toward the dish washing end of things. And I didn’t get
discovered.
So I got a job at Donut Haven. It meant I could survive. But even by the
time I met Karen, after I’d been a doughboy for almost a year, I didn’t have
a pot to piss in. My only financial achievement was that I’d stayed out of
East L.A.
She’d been working that night. I’d never been with a hooker, but I said
yeah when she stumbled against me and slurred that I could do her if I had
the cash. Why not? After a certain point, city depression makes almost any
offer of physical contact attractive. We went to my place and when it was
over she stayed the night. She didn’t have a place of her own.
Karen was a short skinny blonde who lived on the streets, a twenty-two-
year-old with a collection of borderline addictions. When she didn’t have a
trick she slept in an all-night theater or under a bench in the park. She
smelled so bad that first time I had to make her take a shower. It was pretty
obvious she was on a downhill run.
I needed company. And Karen needed a place to put the brakes on and
get herself together if she was going to see her next birthday. I guess I just
saw my chance and took it. But then so did she. I paid her a few more
times, then asked her to move in. She didn’t hesitate.
The first month and a half was great. She stopped hooking, we went
places, I started living interactively. L.A. became a place I could call home,
instead of a wasteland of envy. Karen scaled down her drug use and
regained her health. Each of us got plenty out of the other, a situation we
fooled ourselves into calling love. And, to put a tightener on it, one deluded
weekend we got married. Something Karen looked embarrassed about the
next day and would only rarely admit had happened.
She made a mission of avoiding her present, but her past was even more
thoroughly sealed. The only thing of any personal weight I learned about
her in our year together was that her father had been a cop and that she’d
run away from home when she was fifteen and never gone back.
Maybe it was something in this shitty past, some need for attention, that
made her start hooking again. More likely it was just that I was not a rich
enough vein of disposable income.
 It was a bad time, it was the beginning of the end, it happened early in
our marriage, and it didn’t stop. If she’d been all one thing, if she’d been
sluttishly callous in her pursuit of her preferred lifestyle, maybe I could
have called an end to it and walked. But along with all the absences and the
fucking of other men, she still talked about love, still said she wanted to
stay with me. Most of me knew she just wanted to have her cake and eat it
—hump for her money, get stoned, hang out, and at the end of it all come
home to some sucker who’d provide a domestic recharge situation. But
there was another part of me that so desperately wanted the whole couple
thing that I could not rid myself of the idea that everything would come
right in the end.
It wasn’t easy, though, this attempt to hang on. The first few times she
came home from a gig it was all I could do not to hit her. I’d wait up,
stupidly hoping she’d fall into my arms and tell me how glad she was to be
back. But what usually happened was she’d walk straight to the shower and
wash. So I’d follow her in and watch her undress, see the dried come on her
belly like shiny, flaking scars, and think I was going to puke.
Eventually, though, I got numbed to it. I grew an insect shell over my
boiling sadness and I stopped waiting up. It wasn’t that the pain was any
less real, it was just that I didn’t have the energy to keep confronting it so
actively. For a while I conned myself into thinking I could separate things,
that I could section off the Karen who went out and sucked cock from the
part-time wife who still declared an interest in me.
But that state of self-induced stupidity didn’t last. It might have been
possible to maintain perhaps if things had stayed low-level, but she
increased the pressure—escalating her whoring from the odd daytime stint
to regular weeknights, then on to sleepovers and more. She mentioned a
doctor, a policeman … Toward the end she was disappearing for a week or
two at a time without warning. And I, of course, was self-destructing with a
rage that had gone beyond jealousy into the realm of hate and self-loathing.
Through it all she kept telling me she hadn’t stopped caring, that she owed
her life to me for pulling her out of the gutter. But by then I was too far
gone to believe it.
When she went missing eight days ago, I’d had a feeling something more
than the usual call-out might be involved, something a lot more illegal and a
lot more dangerous. But I didn’t call the police. I went searching for her
eventually, but that was out of guilt, not love.
Now I’d found her and death, that ultimate clarifier, hadn’t done a thing
to change the way I felt. Her corpse could have been made of rubber for all
the emotion it evoked in me.
And it was this unveiling of the crushing pointlessness of our time
together that had stopped me from announcing our connection. I just didn’t
care enough anymore to put up with the hassle it would bring.
Eight days ago.
She’d come home late after a two-week absence and she didn’t look
good. Her skin had gone beyond its usual gothic paleness to pallor, she’d
lost weight, and her hair was dull. Nevertheless, there was a jagged energy
about her, like she was a kid at a party about to give the best present, but to
someone she didn’t really like. And basically that’s what she did, took me
outside and gave me a present—the Prelude.
I knew by the look on her face she wanted me to be pleased and, shit, I
wasn’t going to kick about being given a car, but the gift confused me. I
said all the right things, though, the things she obviously wanted to hear,
and we took it on a test drive to Santa Monica. All the way I couldn’t stop
trying to figure what particular variation of sexual commerce had been
necessary to get that kind of money together in two weeks.
Back in the apartment she sprawled on the couch, legs apart, leather
mini riding up. I started to ask questions, but she drew me down. I wanted
to pull back and hassle her, or at least grasp after dignity by firing off
something like, “I wouldn’t defile my cock in your semen-soaked guts.”
But I hadn’t had sex for two weeks and the feel and the smell of her was too
much. I kissed her breasts through the cotton of her singlet and slid my
hand between her legs. She used to moan when I did this, but now she was
quiet, waiting for something. So what? I carried on, pulled her briefs off,
pushed up her skirt, and rammed myself into her. I tried to ignore how
distant she felt, after all I wasn’t expecting a valid emotional exchange. I
just wanted to unload. Dealing with the emptiness that would come later
was something I was used to.
But then I reached up under her skirt to get a better grip and the palm of
my hand brushed against something that shouldn’t have been there. A
swollen ridge, spiky along the top. It stopped me dead. I jerked out and had
a look. Karen watched me closely.
“What happened?”
“It’s where cars come from.”
A twelve-inch horizontal scar curving from the left of her belly to her
back, between hip and ribs, puckered and purple and still cinched with half-
embedded loops of shiny black surgical thread. It made me think of The Fly,
the remake with Jeff Gold-blum, where some kind of obscene bristle things
start growing out of his back.
But this wasn’t a film, it wasn’t even happening in Beverly Hills. This
disfigurement had none of those ameliorations. It was stark and brutal and
she’d wanted me to see it.
“What do you mean?”
“I sold my kidney.”
“Huh?”
“I sold one of my kidneys. Don’t look at me like that, they do it all the
time in India.”
“I don’t understand. How can you sell a kidney?”
“You’ve got two of them.”
“I mean … who buys them?”
“A doctor.”
“The doctor.”
“Yeah, the doctor.”
The latest client getting the sleepover treatment. Someone she’d been
seeing more and more of over the last few months.
“You sold your kidney to a trick? This is like some kind of extreme
S&M thing, right?”
“I knew you’d be a prick about it.”
“Well, Jesus, don’t you have any self-respect?”
“Shut the fuck up, okay? It’s my body, my kidney. Like it’s my pussy.
For thirty grand I wasn’t going to say no.”
That froze me and for a moment I couldn’t think of anything to say. On
one hand, selling an organ was a bizarre thing to do, but on the other it
wasn’t. Not in L.A. Not for someone like Karen. Thirty thousand dollars is,
after all, a lot of money.
“What did he want it for? I mean, what do you do with a kidney?”
 “I don’t know, give it to a hospital. Who cares? You want a smoke?”
As she reached into the pocket of her jacket I noticed she was wearing a
gold bracelet I hadn’t seen before. It had a lot of filigree engraving on it and
looked antique.
“My, that’s pretty.”
“A get-well from the doc.”
“Very nice.”
She sighed tiredly. “Do you want a smoke or not?”
Karen didn’t own the usual glass tube with kitchen scourer stuffed down
the middle. Too easy to start carrying around and, like ID, too much of a
giveaway if she got busted hooking. Instead she made her own.
Foil stretched and held with a rubber band across a glass of water three
quarters full, a small oval of needle perforations on one side of the circle, a
half-inch slit on the other. Pile up cigarette ash and a piece of crack. Then
burn that sexy little volcano with a disposable lighter and suck pure white
smoke straight into your head.
When she couldn’t hold any more she handed it over. I fresh-ashed and
reloaded. Cool smoke going in, dead mouth, lungs stretched to burst, let a
little out, and suck in even more. Dab the coal out with a pearl of spit. And
hold, and hold … And then breathe out, nice and slow. Curl up, close eyes.
Nothing exists. Only you, floating in some totally painless void. Better than
smack, better than love. An adorable distant nausea. Given the choice,
you’d choose this over any sensation in the world.
Ten minutes max, that’s all you get before you hit earth and find nothing
changed. Guts knotted, jaws clenching, anxiety riding in steel-shod. Not the
best condition to be in to deal with tales of kidney excision.
We didn’t talk anymore right away, we knew we were too fritzed to do
it safely. So we bounced around the room instead. Stand, sit, stand again.
TV on and off. Booze from the fridge. Meaningless surface babble.
Then an explosion of sex, a few minutes’ escape from cocaine revenge.
Bent over the table, stabbing it in from behind, both of us grunting like
animals. The faint shitty smell of her ass on the air. When we’d finished we
weren’t any closer than we’d ever been.
She lay on the bed, naked from the waist down, and there was
something about her unconcerned positioning that right then, to me, was a
fresh and unbearable reiteration of just how little I meant to her. She
seemed to be screaming that she didn’t care anymore how I saw her, that
maintaining some measure of grace in my presence was no longer worth the
effort it took.
Jitters of anger were already running up my arms as I started to speak,
but I got a whole lot angrier thirty seconds later.
“That car’s the first thing you’ve given me.”
“I know.”
“Making up for lost time?”
She rolled off the bed and pulled on her briefs.
“It’s a thank you, Jack. And a goodbye. I’m leaving.”
“What?”
“We’re quits. I’ve got some money now, I can move on. Living like this
isn’t good for either of us.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“I like hanging out, getting stoned. I like fucking for money. It’s real.
You live in this bullshit movie-star fantasy world. We don’t connect.”
Around me the world seemed to slip sideways and all the things in the
room looked suddenly flat and sharply defined, like high-resolution photos
of themselves that were too intensely concentrated to recognize. I stood in a
synaptic freeze and catalogued my idiocy.
I’d dragged her back from the edge of narcotic self- destruction, I’d
given her a place to live, I’d fed her and clothed her. And all through her
whoring, the year of lying awake nights imagining those endless insertions
and the showers of come, I’d hung in there, figuring that some day it had to
end and that when it did I’d come out of it safely locked into a partner for
the rest of my life.
At one level, of course, I knew my reasoning was absurd. Any observer
of our relationship could have told me it was going to disintegrate long
before I had any chance of collecting my pay- off. But then, when you need
something to be a certain way bad enough, the hope that things will get
better in the future is an easy blindfold to wear.
Maybe it was because she was doing it just when she’d gotten some
money, maybe it was the coke in my system. I don’t know. Maybe it was
just the fear of being abandoned. Whatever, when I routed back into the
flow I kind of lost control and hit her.
 She shrieked at me and I shrieked back, we grabbed each other and
lurched around the room, and out of anger and desperation I hit her some
more. It wasn’t a pleasant scene, in fact it was very, very bad, and it ended
with her running out of the apartment, bleeding from the mouth. I didn’t try
to stop her.
“You can keep the fucking car.”
It was the last thing she said.
I stood in the middle of the suddenly silent and empty room, under an
unshaded bulb that was too bright. Night air came in through the open door
and something by my feet moved in the breeze. I picked it up—a crumpled
piece of paper that had my name on it—the pink slip for the car. It made me
feel pretty bad.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Three
I checked the clock. Already too late for work. Tough. I wasn’t going, I had
an excuse—a death in the family.
A death. Her death.
How far did she make it? How much time passed between our fight and
the carving of her belly? Maybe she got it straight- away, hacked up just
half an hour after she stormed out into the night. But the body in the park
hadn’t looked eight days old.
If she’d been killed some time last night and the police did find me,
things could get difficult—I had no way to prove where I’d been after I left
work.
My pill supply was in the icebox—a biscuit jar full of blister packs and
brown plastic vials Karen had accepted as payment a month or two back for
taking a shit in front of a room full of doctors up from San Diego on a stag
night. They were all downers of one kind or another and they were all past
their use-by date. But they still worked just fine. I swallowed 20mg of
Valium and thought about phoning Donut Haven. Explaining why I wasn’t
there seemed like such a hassle, though—better to sit with a beer in front of
morning TV and wait for the benzodiazepine haze to wrap me up. Then just
drift …
Scenes in the park. Scenes of her leaving the apartment. A question of
consequences, of meaning, of how I felt. Would she have ended up dead if I
hadn’t exploded? I guess I had to assume some responsibility—but I was
only a link in the chain. I forced her out of the apartment and sometime
later she died. But I forced her out because of the things she’d done, and
she, in turn, had done those things in response to a lifetime of earlier events,
back down the line to childhood. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t
suppose either of us was entirely at fault. But we both played parts and each
part carried its measure of guilt.
And beyond this vaguely apportioned blame, the issue of grief. Slumped
on a couch in a furnished room, while the day stoked its furnaces outside
and bustling, self-improving Californians carelessly let snatches of their
conversation and laughter float up to me, I can’t say grief was paramount in
my emotions. There was shock at violent death, of course, and there was
my own fear of being alone and adrift in the city again. But a devastating
sense of loss? No.
There was relief, though. It sounds foul to say, but it was there—an
obscene voice of truth shouting that the unmanning was over, that the nights
spent waiting for the sound of her feet on the steps outside the apartment
were finally at an end. The hideous compromise I’d had to make to hang on
to a soulless and incomplete replica of a relationship was finished. There
was certainly an element of relief.
But as much as I wanted to bathe in this traitorously comforting
emotion, Karen’s last gesture made it impossible to avoid an artesian
seepage of self-reproach. If she had been all bad, it would have been easier.
But putting the car in my name raised doubts about the completeness of her
coldheartedness and, by extension, any justification I might unearth for my
violence.
I tried to force something more definable out of myself, a few tears or a
sob. The best I could manage was an anemic self-pity just before the pills
kicked in and made manufacturing emotion redundant.
Next morning I woke in a post-Valium languor and found that I was
changed. I’d had to hit the pill jar a second time around ten P.M., but that had
seen me through. One whole day gone AWOL, twenty-four hours that had
been unable to find purchase upon me. Time during which my head had
finally let go of those ideas that had been steadily bleeding themselves dry
through all my time in Los Angeles—the notion of what ought to be done,
what ought to be felt.
I hadn’t pulled the blinds and the sun lay across the room like a brand.
Cali sunshine—envy of the world, a go-get-’em flux of ocean, brand-new
cars, money, and a channeled energy generated by millions of western
seaboarders who were so damn sure they were going to make it. I felt like
rolling around in it like a dog, trying to rub it into my coat so I smelled the
same way.
I lit a cigarette and went to the fridge. Out back, across the street, a girl
was sitting on a balcony. I was naked and she could see me through the
kitchen window, but I didn’t care. I looked at her sitting there in her high-
cut swimsuit and sunglasses. She had arms and legs and a face, and her
pussy was probably getting a little sticky in the heat. But trying to invest
that collection with anything approaching personality or significance
seemed like the biggest waste of time. After a moment it became impossible
to distinguish her from the bricks and the peeling iron railing that
surrounded her.
I went back to bed with a couple of beers. Outside, people would be
blading along the edge of the beach, sitting in open cafes drinking juice and
fresh coffee, sunning up and hanging out. Fuck ’em. This morning
California and all its manic enthusiasms could slide into the ocean for all I
cared.
At one time I’d bought full-scale into that same sunny optimism. I’d
figured as long as you got a job, worked hard at it, and didn’t cross the
police, you had a chance at some sort of a life. A chance at a decent
relationship, a house in a nice place, a car, the occasional holiday … Not a
big life, perhaps, nothing of movie-star incandescence, but one that at least
offered a measure of protection against the world’s cold winds—an entry-
level prize for playing inside the rules.
An idiot’s evaluation. But what else did I have? Certainly not the
liberation of wealth or fame. So I clung to it, hung on grimly with both
hands as though it were a magic cloak that could insulate me from the
erosion of failure, imagining it wrapped close about me even as my time
with Karen pulled it steadily from my grasp.
But that was gone forever now. Last night, while my drugged blood
went endlessly round and round, the last reactionary part of me had finally
accepted a truth that had been screaming itself hoarse all my adult life: that
chances didn’t exist, that they’d all been used up by people who made it
into movies or onto TV.
I fired up the VCR and loaded one of my perfume commercial tapes.
Ads for high-quality cosmetics are some of the best pointers to a proper life.
The people in them are perfect—you can tell just by looking at them. Their
bodies are desirable, they wear the most expensive clothes, and they don’t
even think about money. They live in a world where problems are dealt
with by other people, where it is impossible to doubt yourself, and where no
one can see you without loving you and wanting to be like you.
 The Obsession series was very good, but my favorite on this tape was a
Sun and Moon and Stars clip with Daryl Hannah—dreamy soft-focus,
floating through the universe, free of worry about anything that might
happen back in the world. You couldn’t beat it, a Hollywood star playing
what she really was—a goddess.
I didn’t get out of bed all day. I wanted to sleep some more, but I’d
already had too much, so I read the gossips and watched the episode of 28
FPS again. Lorn looked good in a white tennis skirt and a sleeveless top
that showed glimpses of the sides of her breasts. Once when she was
bending over I thought I saw one of her nipples. I couldn’t stop thinking
about it.
About ten that night Rex came around. He was zipped on coke and all
finger-snapping, joint-popping energy. He was wearing a long, lightweight
cashmere coat over a casual silk-blend suit and he smelled like an
expensive clothes store. The feel of the fabric when he hugged me was
comforting and clean.
Rex made his money fucking. Blond hair, white teeth, slim and sexy. At
first glance a boy with everything Californian. But his skin was pale and the
blue eyes didn’t really do that “have a nice day” thing. When you paid
attention, when you didn’t just skim the surface, it wasn’t hard to believe
the history of suicide attempts he liked to trot out whenever he got the
chance.
Karen had brought him home one night after they’d connected in a
shared role on a porn flick. It was just work to them and they were never
going to be friends, but he and I had hit it off well enough to generate one
of those satellite relationships that exist only within certain parameters—
always at my apartment, always when Karen wasn’t there. We didn’t go out
together, didn’t buddy up for a ball game or sink brews on a standing Friday
night bar date, but it was still friendship of a sort.
He threw himself down on the couch.
“Whew, man, I’m flying. Called in today, you weren’t there. Wanted
some doughnut action. Needed that sugar. Well, didn’t need it, I guess, but I
wanted it, man. I wanted it.”
Rex took a breath and ran his hand over his face. I dug some pills out of
my pocket. Rex shook his head.
 “What happened with work? It’s not like you.”
I swallowed a Valium and told him Karen was dead, that she was found
in the park murdered.
He was glitteringly aghast, his mouth open and his white teeth shining.
He shifted quickly to where I was sitting on the bed and put his arm around
me. He held me close and I was tempted to interpret it as genuine
commiseration. In a way it was. I’m sure he felt sadness at what he
perceived to be my loss—sadness for me, sadness that someone he knew
was dead. But at the same time, I couldn’t rid myself of the suspicion that
what he was really plugged into was a resonance between the loss he
imagined me to feel and his own black void of unhappiness.
“Wow, man … I don’t know what to say. I mean, Jesus …”
“It’s not like it wasn’t going to happen someday.”
“Sure, sure. But it brings it home, dude, it brings it home.”
“Mortality?”
“How everything fucks up. How we fuck up everything.”
He was silent for a moment, then: “What happened? I mean, can you
talk about it? Is it too soon?”
“You know how we were. I can’t tell you I’m dying inside.”
“But it’s something to assimilate. It’s something to come to terms with.”
At this point I was pretty certain I was right, that Rex was all set to use
this situation as a windfall opportunity. He was after a little transposition.
He wanted to project his own pain onto the backdrop of Karen’s death and
watch it play. But that wasn’t going to work for me. Too complicated. He
was going to expect me to be intensely genuine and introspective, and I
wasn’t going to be able to explain to him how the death of someone could
feel so … peripheral.
“You know, maybe it is too soon.”
“Oh … okay. Sure.”
He looked robbed and for a moment I could see into him, see the
horrible twisting beast he had to struggle with each day, and absurdly I felt
like I was the one who was short-changing people here.
“They found her in the park a couple of days ago. Before it happened
she sold her kidney. Maybe it had something to do with it.”
“Sold her kidney? Like … sold her kidney?”
Rex couldn’t help a quick snort of laughter.
 “Now that’s what I call hooking.”
He caught himself, was immediately concerned and shocked again.
“Sorry, man, too much blow. God, that’s terrible. But I can dig it.
Sometimes you feel so disgusting you want to have part of yourself cut
away. I mean, you know what I’m talking about, right?”
“She just wanted the money.”
“Nah. It might not have been conscious, but she was making a
statement. She was saying how ruined she was, paying for being bad.”
This looked like a long road to travel. I got up and took a few steps
around the room so I didn’t have to answer.
“Still, she’s got to be better off now, huh?”
“Oh, please …”
“Come on, you think this is all there is?”
“Pretty much.”
“You don’t think there’s some kind of continuation?”
“If you get on TV.”
“Hey, it’s your night, but …”
He looked down and busied himself with a vial of coke. We charged up
and I talked a little faster.
“I mean it. Only half a dozen people remember my father, right? It’s
like he never existed. But someone like Dean Martin, say, is still here. It
doesn’t matter if he’s dead, he’s still in his records and his movies. That’s
life after death. That’s as close as you get.”
“I wonder if Jerry sees it that way.”
“Of course he does. Same thing’s going to happen to him.”
Rex nodded like he was taking this in, but I knew he thought it was a
pile of shit. After a moment he cleared his throat and stood up.
“Got a gig, dude. You want another hit?”
I felt a quick fizz of affection for him because I knew he’d like to argue
with me but was holding back, despite the coke.
Another snort and he split to service the wife of a director who was
shooting nights over at Warner. We hugged at the door. I heard his Porsche
start down on the street and the breathy clatter of its engine turned the salty
night air hollow.
The sound died quickly as he turned a corner somewhere out in the city,
and with it went the illusion of his company. He’d been there, he’d heard
about Karen, but it hadn’t gone very deep. Where were the questions about
my long night being grilled down at headquarters, about the arrangements
I’d made for her funeral, about all the other things that also hadn’t
happened?
The truth was that he could only care so much. He needed too much of
himself for himself.
Later, I walked around to an all-night Korean store for beer and food. On
Main the restaurants glowed with indirect lighting—smooth interiors full of
happy people spending money, drinking good wine, making plans for the
future. Parked cars down both sides of the street looked shiny, looked like
they belonged in three-car garages surrounded by exotically stocked
gardens. It all made me feel outnumbered and vulnerable.
Back in bed. I stared at the ceiling for a while then dialled a twenty-
four-hour shoot-location service—recorded info on where in Los Angeles
current productions would be filming over the next week. The trades
reported an exodus of filmmaking from the Hollywood teat, out to places
like Seattle and Canada, even to Fox Australia. But it was still easy to find
several shoots a week within driving distance. A lot of these were TV
cop/action series, or straight-to-video dross filmed out in the valley—but
the big budgeters were there too, trying to find a new angle on the
landmarks of the city.
And that was why I phoned. Not because I had any interest in the
mechanics of putting a movie together, but because I found it comforting
that Willis and Travolta still occasionally walked the same unremarkable
streets as me.
Late at night, with enough pills, booze, and self-delusion I could turn
this into a point of connection between us.
I fell asleep with the phone against my ear, listening to its endless
reassurances.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Four
Next morning I was slumped on the toilet feeling rough, working my way
through a shit, when the door of the bathroom banged open and I met Ryan
for the first time. He stood for a moment staring at me, like some kind of
spree killer deciding whether or not to pull the trigger, then he flipped open
his cop ID.
“Wipe your ass.”
It looked like I’d underestimated the investigative ability of the city of
Los Angeles. I used a few sheets of paper, but I felt pretty exposed and
didn’t really do much of a job. When I started to pull my pants up he
stopped me.
“That last wad was still dirty. You don’t want an itchy crack. Give it a
decent scrub.”
Right then I knew I had much more of a problem than just being found
by the police. I’d drawn a member of the force who got off on what
happened in toilets. I checked him out while I was making sure I was
properly clean. He looked like a plump Bela Lugosi—pale skin, black suit,
soft body, dark receding hair slicked straight back. I put him at an unhealthy
fifty.
“That looks a whole lot better. You know, it’s a good thing you’re not
doing the whole ‘What’s this about Officer?’ business. I’d be insulted. What
do you call your dick? Average? Or a bit under?”
After that we went downstairs to a gray Plymouth and drove up to
Monica.
Weekend traffic made the boulevard busy. Sunlight bounced off
windshields and fenders, hurting my eyes, making me wish for somewhere
dark and silent to strain last night’s booze and pill sludge from my system.
The air stank and it was too hot.
I stayed quiet most of the way. If the police had found some sort of link
between me and Karen I figured there wasn’t anything I could say that
wouldn’t hurt me. I certainly couldn’t tell them I’d already seen her dead.
That would have looked somewhat odd. By the time we hit Palisades Park,
though, I was so tense I couldn’t help myself blurting:
“Is this about Karen? My wife? I mean, she’s been gone like two weeks
now. Did something happen to her?”
Ryan turned his head and smiled at me.
“That’s good, Jackie. I like that.”
The morgue was on Euclid—a street that, unlike its parallel brothers, had a
name rather than a number because it fell thirteenth off Wilshire Boulevard.
Squat and gray it crouched between a dress wholesaler and an auto parts
complex, like an animal hunched over food. On the grass verge out front a
bunch of kids were doing something unpleasant to a dog.
Ryan didn’t use the main entrance; instead he took me around the side
of the building and down a concrete ramp to where the ambulances dropped
their cargo. Into the basement.
The place where they kept the bodies looked like a public toilet, all
white tiles and hard strip lighting. Rows of square, stainless-steel panels
with handles like old-fashioned refrigerators ran three high down opposing
walls. It was all pretty much cold and unwelcoming, but I guess the meat on
the shelves didn’t care.
The room was empty, Ryan whistled for the help. I closed my eyes and
listened to fluid move in pipes that crossed the ceiling. Poison being sucked
out of dead people behind the panels, leaving them clean and de-stressed at
last? There were other sounds too—the ticking of whatever gigantic
refrigeration system stopped things going off down there, air blowing
through a vent, a game-show-tuned TV blatting away through an open
doorway at the end of the room.
A fat Japanese guy carrying a clipboard and a can of Diet Pepsi ambled
out to meet us looking back over his shoulder like he was missing a Mars
landing. He wore glasses and his grubby white lab coat had a piece of dried
noodle stuck to it. His black hair was plastered back in a Jack Lord style
with something that made it shine.
“BMW three series and a round trip to Florida for a family of four.
Some people have all the luck. Never me. How you doing, Ryan?” He
flicked a look at me. “This business today?”
Ryan’s voice was hard, like he was steeling himself for something.
 “The girl they found in the park. Wednesday.”
The Japanese face softened up and went sickly genuine. He made a
small, nod-of-the-head kind of bow to me.
“Oh, so sorry. You here to identify? Nobody figured, so she already
autopsied.”
“Jackie’s a tough guy, he can take it. Bring her out.”
We all walked to a wall and the Japanese guy jerked a handle, swung
open one of the steel panels, and rolled out a long drawer. TV hadn’t got it
quite right. I’d been expecting the buffer of a white sheet, maybe just a peek
at her face. What I got was a naked, uncovered Karen lying on something
that looked like a thin air mattress with the edges turned up—to stop any
collected body fluids leaking into the drawer.
I glanced across at Ryan. His face had lost what little color it had and
his breathing was strained.
Karen looked different than she had in the park. She looked worse. Like
I thought I’d seen, part of her left side had been removed—a curving strip a
few inches wide that ran from the cut on the front of her belly to halfway
around her back. The doctors had extended the main wound on her belly up
into her chest to perform the postmortem. They’d also cut away the back of
her head. I could tell because it lay too deep in the rubber of the mattress.
As a result, the skin on her face was loose and her features were blurred.
She wasn’t beautiful anymore, but it was her all right. The anchor points of
the matrix were still there—the short blond hair, the pale anti-Californian
skin, the pierced nipples and navel. Only now they looked like they’d been
stuck on a side of beef, some sort of bizarre decoration that had lost its
significance.
I wondered, as Ryan and I stepped closer to the drawer, if proximity
would release the emotions that had seemed so completely cauterized that
night in the park. After all, a year together should have left me with at least
some memories worth cherishing. But looking at that life-sized monster
doll, all the times we’d spent together, all the fucking and the fighting, felt
like a movie about someone else.
She’d been cleaned with something antiseptic and the hospital stink
masked whatever personal odor there might have been. I longed for a living
smell, some olfactory mnemonic of close times—stale shit, dried piss,
sweat, anything. The musk of her cunt would have been best. But it was all
gone.
I pressed a fingertip into the side of her breast. When I took it away the
flesh was slow returning to shape. Ryan was staring at me. I didn’t know
why he was acting so jitzed, but when our eyes locked I knew I was in deep
shit. Because his had tears in them.
The orderly shifted his bulk from one foot to the other, picking up on
the tension.
“She a pretty girl, this one. Must have looked very nice before this.”
Ryan snapped out of the look of death he was giving me, dragged
himself back to real time, and scanned the body.
“Yeah, she was pretty all right.”
When he started running his fingers gently over her pussy I thought the
orderly would leap in, or at least shout some kind of outrage, but it didn’t
seem to faze him in the slightest. Ryan carried on for a while, looking sadly
at her face all the time. The orderly just watched. And I stood there and felt
vaguely jealous, wishing I could touch her dead cunt too.
Ryan took his hand away.
“You’re quiet, Jackie. I brought Kleenex, you know.”
“What happened to her?”
“Word at the station says someone cut out everything she had inside.”
The Japanese guy flipped through some papers on his clipboard and
started reading.
“Twenty-three-centimeter vertical incision of a surgical nature.
Intersecting lateral incision above the mons of eighteen centimeters.
Excision of left abdominal wall between hip and lower ribs. Area of skin
approximately eight centimeters square missing from the right shoulder
blade. No other cuts or abrasions. All internal organs, except heart and
lungs, removed.”
“Sounds thorough, wouldn’t you say, Jackie? Let’s take a look.”
Ryan nodded and the orderly wedged his things between Karen’s legs
and peeled open the part of her wound that hung together above the hole in
her side. The edges of the cuts were smooth and in cross section they
carried the same striations of white fat and red muscle as meat in a
butcher’s shop.
“See?”
 He looked at me like I might not understand.
“See? Empty.”
It was true. Below the last rib there was very little left—no blue-gray
pulp of intestines, no sticky lumps of offal, not even a pool of collected glit.
Under the hard lights, a butterfly of pelvic bone shone whitely beneath a
thin layer of tissue. There was no blood, everything was clean.
Gutted like a fish and hosed out.
Ryan shouldered the orderly out of the way, took hold of one of her
arms, and pulled it across her body until she lifted enough for me to see her
shoulder blade. It looked like someone had used a cheese-slice on her. A
rough patch of skin was missing, right where her tattoo had been.
The Japanese guy looked back toward the room where his TV waited.
“Listen, guys, I got things to do. You wanna see anyone else?”
Ryan shook his head.
“Okay. Shut her up when you go. Make sure the handle clicks, or could
get smelly.”
He touched hands with Ryan and took his drink and clipboard out of the
room, back to the TV noise. I heard him flipping channels, then things
stabilized on Pamela Anderson’s voice. His Pepsi can had left a blotch of
moisture on one of Karen’s thighs.
I knew it was cinematically mandated that I show some sort of grief, so
I hung my head and tried to look like I was struggling manfully with my
emotions. Until Ryan told me not to bother, and we left.
Out in the car we sat in silence while Ryan wheezed and sweated and
eventually put a pill under his tongue. It worked so fast it must have been
nitro. When he had himself fixed he slid his arm around my shoulders and
squeezed the side of my neck.
“What was today’s lesson? C’mon, I know you were paying attention.
No? It was about me telling you something.”
“Obviously that you found Karen and she’s dead.”
“Oh, I didn’t need to tell you the dead part. You already knew.”
I tried to protest, but he cut me off.
“The way I feel right now it’d be safer not to shit me. Today’s lesson
was about me telling you that I know.”
“Know what?”
 Ryan took a breath, held it in, then let it out like he didn’t want it to get
away from him.
“With me, Jackie, trying to see how far you can push things ain’t
something you want to do.”
He took his arm away and put the key in the ignition. I was sitting next
to a frightening man and I was starting to get frightened.
He dropped me at the corner of Santa Monica and Lincoln. We hadn’t
spoken during the drive, but as I was getting out of the car he stopped me.
“Jackie, the part of her shoulder that was fucked up, did she have a
mark there? Something distinctive that might have been cut away for a
reason?”
It was a simple question. The answer was yes, that was where she’d had
an Egyptian scarab inked into her skin. But I wasn’t going to tell Ryan that.
He was too fucking odd. The pussy-stroking scene wasn’t any kind of
forensic procedure I’d ever heard about.
“Not that I can think of.”
“Sure about that, now?”
“I think I’d know.”
“Yeah, Jackie, you’d know.”
He pulled away from the curb and left me standing there feeling like I
should have said something different.
I walked downhill to look at the sea. There were white-caps out beyond
the breakers and the water looked uneasy. Even so, it seemed to me that
underneath those waves the world would be a whole lot more peaceful than
here on dry land. I spent a long time staring at them, then I took a cab back
to Venice.
The phone was ringing when I got in—Donut Haven wanting to know
when I’d be back at work, sympathetically informing me that if it was any
later than tomorrow I’d be fired. I broke the connection without answering.
I wasn’t going back, ever. The rent was paid till the end of the month, and
the month after that was a problem I’d worry about later.
I ran a tape I’d rented on the way back—Jennifer Jason Leigh in Rush. I
felt like watching cops get fucked up.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Five
Days passed. I’m not sure how many, they were all pretty much the same.
Beer, junk food, pills. Sprawled on the bed, shades down but the windows
open for air. I sweated and didn’t wash. I wanted to be dirty. I wanted to be
caked in filth.
In the kitchenette things rotted.
Crushed cigarette packs and empty beer cans made walking around the
place hazardous. But that was okay because I didn’t do it much. The
bathroom thing was a drag, so mostly I leaned over the edge of the bed and
pissed in a bottle. Once I took a shit in a plastic bag.
The TV ran eighteen hours a day, from the moment I could coordinate
sufficiently to thumb the button in the morning, until the daily buildup of
tranq and booze reached a level that interfered with vision.
A couple of times, when it was dark and quiet, I went outside to check
the car. Once, I got in and drank a beer and listened to the radio.
I guess fugueing out this way was a reaction to something. Maybe a
shrink could tell you. I put it down to my newly hatched rejection of the
mainstream. And to something else a lot simpler to understand—fear. Fear
that Karen’s death might bleed forward in time and fuck me up.
I was already the object of Ryan’s attention. I had no idea where the
whacko play at the morgue was going to lead, but even a best-case scenario
was something I could do without. And I kept thinking about Karen’s
tattoo. It hadn’t meant anything to me when she’d had it done. She’d come
home with it one day a few months back, I’d had a look, made the usual
comments, and that was that. She told me she’d had it done with a friend.
What did I care? It was just another piece of body decoration.
So it would have been easy enough to tell Ryan what had been on the
missing square of skin. It would have been, so to speak, no skin off my
nose. Just like I could have told him she’d recently had her kidney removed.
But I hadn’t. And despite my gnawing three A.M. fears, I wasn’t going
to. I was out of that world now. Out of the world where sniveling Joe
Citizen did his best to be a good boy.
 Plus, as with already knowing she was dead, letting on about the other
things now would only make me look more suspicious.
***

A market on Lincoln, evening coming down. I was out of the apartment for
the first time in four days and I had no feeling about it. The paranoia I’d
experienced on Main the night I stocked up at the Korean store had been
replaced by a numbed insularity. I moved, but I didn’t feel the air against
my skin. I heard the sounds of traffic and people, but they were filtered
through some muting device that rendered them meaningless. The colors
and angles and planes of the surrounding buildings were indecipherable.
None of this bothered me. I wanted booze and food, I wasn’t thinking about
much else.
Until a wino hassled me for change as I approached the sliding doors.
He was one of a group of four, all of them crusted like forgotten, turn-of-
the-century statues in that brown semigloss accretion cities use to
camouflage the homeless. Their clothes—all of them wore too many for the
summer heat—had the slickness of oilskin, their hair looked like something
dredged from the bottom of a river and smeared into place with a trowel.
They stank of shit, garbage, and genital cheese.
The guy in my face was about fifty and pretty close to the edge; sores
around his mouth, the shakes, liquid eyes, that dumb expression beggars get
through years of humiliating themselves by asking other people for money.
It looked like he needed a drink pretty badly. It looked like the hope of
getting one was the only thing holding him together.
I pushed past into the cool interior. Produce section. I felt a stab of guilt
as I moved past the fresh, crisp, tastefully arranged bins. Every famous
person on the planet ate a super diet of carefully balanced fruit and
vegetables, unrefined carbohydrate, and hormone-free protein. It was
important. It meant you stayed looking better than everyone else. I knew I
should do it too. My telehosting course had stressed the impact of good skin
tone and clear eyes on the projection of personality. But I couldn’t do it. I
could never do it. And all the words about it from books and TV health
shows and the stars’ beauty tips in magazines spun in my head until the
only way I could shut them down was to eat stuff that was so manifestly
bad for me there was simply no point in attempting dietary salvation.
I went to the chiller cabinet that lined the rear wall and leaned against it,
face on glass, exchanging heat. Packaged meat, low cholesterol dips, zero-
cholesterol cakes, naturally extracted juices … Most of the food had
product photos on the front and I got hung up for a while picturing the
homes they must have been taken in. Soft lighting, tasteful decoration,
high-income furnishings. Successful homes where life was fulfilled and
comfortable. I quit when the security guys started to hover.
Inside this hangar-sized supermarket the feeling of detachment that
swaddled me increased. The overweight women, the tired men, the whining
kids—all the fucking, guzzling calibrations of moderate-income humanity
—trundling their carts up one aisle and down another, seemed so pointless
and disgusting it frightened me to consider I was part of the same race.
They were fairground constructions, papier-mâché models drawn in
shopping circuits by a network of hidden cogs and chains. Things to be shot
at or knocked over with baseballs.
I hit the snack and convenience-food sections heavily, then moved on to
liquor. Bud was reduced so I took a couple of six-packs. On my way to the
checkouts I had to pass the spirits. Brandy, gin, vodka, all the rest. On an
impulse I added a half gallon of generic whiskey to the beer.
The girl at the checkout swiped my Visa and we had a few seconds’
wait for authorization. Time to worry about credit balances and to wonder
what her cunt looked like, and if sitting on it all day crusted up her briefs. I
was putting my stuff into paper sacks when she handed my card back. She
smiled. I smiled too. And pictured my load sliding off her chin.
“Spare change, buddy?”
Same wino as before, the fuckwit didn’t realize he’d already asked me
ten minutes ago.
“Spare change, buddy?”
Lush voice. All clogged mucus and collapsed nasal passages.
“Buddy? Buddy? Just something so’s I can get something to eat.”
I looked past him, at his three derelict companions slumped against a
wall twenty feet away. They were watching expectantly, gearing up to grab
a share. I spoke quietly so they wouldn’t hear.
 “You don’t want anything to eat. But I bet you could use a drink.”
“Well, to tell you the truth …”
“Sure. It’s a hard life.”
“Damn hard. Takes it out of a man just sucking in your next breath. I
don’t suppose you got a bottle in one of them sacks, do ya?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off the bags in my arms. When he spoke it
was to them. His lips were cracked and he licked them constantly.
“A fine young man like you, mister, sure to be taking maybe a bottle of
wine home for dinner. A fine civilized young man like yourself.”
“Are they your friends, over there?”
“Yes, sir. We been watching out for each other a few months now. Lots
of others come and go, but we stuck together.”
“Ah … See, I’m thinking there won’t really be enough to go around.
What do you want? A few mouthfuls for everyone, or something more
sensible?”
The wino flicked a quick look over his shoulder and licked his lips
some more.
“Well, mister, I sure wouldn’t want to do nothing that weren’t sensible.
What exactly is it you got in there?”
“I think we want somewhere more secluded.”
“Can I take a peek first, mister? Just to kinda fortify myself.”
I let him see the whiskey.
“Holy Jesus Christ! Come on, there’s a place around back.”
He took off at a trot, coat flapping, skinny arms jerking arrhythmically.
It looked like the sockets of his hips were filled with broken glass. He made
it about twenty feet, then stopped when he realized I wasn’t beside him and
waved frantically for me to catch up.
The market kept its garbage hoppers in a three-sided brick pen. The
walls were about six feet high and, crouching at the back, we were pretty
much shielded from view. Cars in the parking lot were visible through the
open end but the sky was getting bruised around the edges by then and I
figured the evening shadows would hide us well enough. Besides, I wasn’t
going to do anything that bad.
When I pulled the whiskey out of the paper sack the wino almost lost
control. He grabbed for the jug, but I held it out of reach.
“You a hard-drinking man?”
 “Mister, I’m the hard-drinkinest man you ever met. How much of that
hooch you figure you got to take home?”
“Have a taste.”
“Sweet Jesus.”
I kept hold of the jug but let him pull it to his mouth and take a small
swallow. Then I took it away.
“Oh, Jesus, mister, don’t do that to an old man. You know what they
say, a taste is worse than none at all.”
His laugh was so laden with need I felt like squirming.
“Maybe I should get your friends. It doesn’t seem fair to leave them
out.”
“You don’t want to do that. No sir, not if you want to keep any for
yourself. They’ll drink it dry. I seen them fuckers do it before. Just you and
me’s best. Believe me.”
His eyes flicked back and forth between my face and the jug. He was
dribbling and it looked like he was on track for some kind of wino anxiety
attack.
“Want some more?”
“Fuckin’ A—I mean, damn straight I’d like some more. You can spare
it, can’t you, mister? For this old bastard?”
“Two conditions.”
“Whatever you want. I’m happy to oblige.”
“You get five minutes with the bottle. Five minutes only.”
“Okay. Sure, sure.”
“And you stop drinking longer than twenty seconds, I take it away and
give it to your friends.”
“All right, mister, whatever you say. Let me at it. Let me at it!”
I gave him the jug. He held it with both hands, tipped his head back, and
started to gulp. He got about a quarter pint inside him before he stopped to
take a breath.
“Whoa, buddy, that’s the right stuff. That hits the spot for sure.”
His eyes were watering a little, but he seemed okay. The only
immediate change was he looked a bit healthier.
“Ten seconds.”
“Just getting my wind.”
“Fifteen seconds.”
 He stuck it in his face again. His swallows were a little slower this time,
but he was still going for it.
“Fucking Jesus, I ain’t been let loose on this much hooch for a long
time. I gotta take my coat off. Won’t be more’n a few seconds.”
“Take your coat off.”
He was sweating. When his coat came clear, the stink of his body filled
the space around us. Mostly piss, but a lot of other rotted down stuff as
well.
“Better start again.”
“A few more seconds.”
I reached for the jug.
“Okay! Jesus Christ, what’s your hurry?”
He clutched the whiskey to his chest like he was holding a baby.
“I said there were conditions. If you don’t want any more …”
“Shit, who said anything about that? Just trying to pace myself, is all.”
“Give it back.”
He jerked the jug to his mouth so fast he cut his lip. Blood ran around
the opening and down one side of his chin in a thin red line. I don’t think he
noticed. He was trying to use a few brains this time, making his mouth
small and taking shallow sips. His arms shook with the effort of keeping the
jug steady.
When he came up for air he made a sort of hooting noise. I guess it was
a laugh.
“Phew, buddy, I think I’m getting the hang of this. Got a smoke?”
“You don’t have time.”
Under the dirt his face was flushed. He grinned stupidly, shrugged like
he had a man’s job to finish, and raised the whiskey again.
This time some of it went down the wrong way and he spluttered
violently, trying to clear his throat. Something ran out of his nose and he
stuck his head between his knees and coughed for a while. When he
straightened, the skin around his eyes looked swollen and there was a caul
of spit across his chin. About a fifth of the jug was gone. He dragged his
sleeve across his face and started humming snatches of some tune to
himself.
“How much of it are you going to drink?”
“All of it.”
 “Half a gallon?”
“You just watch me.”
And away he went again.
A little while later he started puking. I heard his teeth crunch against
glass as his head jerked forward and a fountain of booze sprayed around the
neck of the jug. He managed to get it away from his face, but his guts didn’t
stop heaving. Dark gouts of whiskey and whatever else he’d had in his
stomach splatted onto the concrete between his knees and ran into the V of
his crotch. The liquid foamed at the edges.
“Bit ambitious, the whole jug.”
“This make you feel good, you pitiless prick?”
“Have some more.” “You think I won’t?”
Loops of viscous puke hung from his chin, they swayed as his head
moved. He looked a lot less healthy now.
“I’m waiting to see.”
He tried to keep belligerent eye contact with me as he went back to the
booze. But it didn’t last. He puked again. Swallowed and puked, swallowed
and puked, until the cycle exhausted him and the vomit-slick jug slipped
from his hands.
He collapsed sideways and his head made a thunking noise as it hit the
concrete. I stood up and watched him convulse, he looked like a dog having
a nightmare. Between his retching he cursed me—strange old-man curses
from a previous era that made him sound like Elmer Fudd.
The jug of whiskey stood where he’d dropped it, upright, unbroken,
almost half empty. When his body would let him, he stared at it as though it
were some reliquary for the whole of his life. He tried to reach for it. I
thought he was going to make it, but a few inches short the strength left him
and he closed his eyes and let his arm fall. Without lifting his head he puked
a stream of blood that gathered itself into a chest-sized inkblot and washed
against the base of the whiskey bottle.
He wasn’t dying—I checked his breathing—but it looked pretty much
like he’d fucked an already fucked stomach. I left him with the remains of
the booze and headed out into the parking lot. The last sound I heard him
make was a prolonged wet fart as his bowels let go.
I had a bit of an erection all the way to the car.
I’d almost got the door of the Prelude closed when a plump white hand
reached out of the corner of vision and stopped it. Ryan moved into frame,
backlit by the mercury wash from the street.
“Jackie boy. It’s that man again! Don’t start the car.”
He walked around to the passenger side and got in. He settled his bulk
comfortably into the seat.
“This is cozy.”
“Have you got some news about Karen?”
I tried to sound tiredly grieving and expectant at the same time.
“Interesting thing to do to the tramp.”
“Huh?”
“I let you have the dumb act last time, don’t push it. I was watching.
Been watching a couple of days. You don’t get out much.”
“He asked for a drink. I gave him one.”
“Yeah, I saw.”
“He could have stopped any time.”
“But you knew he wouldn’t.”
I had the interior light on, it made shadows of Ryan’s eyes, outlined the
pouches of fat beneath them. He looked even more unhealthy than before.
“Aren’t you here about Karen?”
“Oh, you want to talk about Karen?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Boy, let me think … Maybe because you weren’t surprised when you
saw her at the morgue? Maybe because you had something to do with
putting her there?”
“Get real.”
“If I got any realer, boy, you’d be face down bleeding through both
sides of your head. I know you lied to me … Didn’t she ever tell you about
us? Didn’t she tell you who I was?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I knew her, you asshole. She was a whore, I used to buy her. I liked her
because she went that extra mile, didn’t have a problem with those frills
most cunts get all precious about. She used to call me Daddy while we were
doing it.”
“You’re old enough.”
 “Yow, Jackie, bitch-ee! You oughta be more respectful, I must have
been a regular source of income for you two.”
I wondered if this was all just cop psych to freak me into confessing to
something. I’d never heard Karen mention Ryan’s name, but that didn’t
mean anything. She might have hated the police but she’d fuck one if there
was money in it.
The next thing Ryan said, though, cleared things up considerably.
“You look like a smart guy. Given that seeing her on her hands and
knees wasn’t an unusual occurrence for me, it shouldn’t be too hard to
figure that I know what you said about her shoulder was a little inaccurate.
One of those Egyptian bugs, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Oh, shit, yeah, the scarab! Fuck, I’m sorry, I must have been in shock
or something.”
“Ooo, that’s upsetting.”
“What do you want? I’m sorry. When I saw her body I just froze up.”
“Or maybe the tattoo connected to something you didn’t want me to
know about.”
“Like what? Why would I hide anything?”
“Right now I don’t know, Jackie. But if I gotta take a guess I’d say
because you killed her.”
You have to think of the exact right comeback to a statement like that.
Surprise? Indignation? Outright denial? Something that will make him stop
believing what he so obviously does. I couldn’t do it. So I lit a cigarette and
stared out the window at the floodlit cars. Through the glass of the market
people moved around all purposeful and clean, safe in whatever lives they
led. And for one brief moment I was envious of them, of their acceptance of
the rules of the world they found themselves in. I’d been like them once,
but not any more, and I’d moved too far away to ever go back. Now I was
in some alien place, sitting next to a cop who wanted to fix me for murder.
A woman in shorts that cut into the crack of her ass walked across the
parking lot to her car. Ryan watched her like some flabby predator. When
she bent over to put her shopping in the trunk he rubbed his balls.
“Look at that. What sort of beard you say she’s got? Real hairy, or just
one of those wispy things around the outside of her hole? Whaddya say,
Jack? You shack up with someone like Karen, I know you gotta like cooze.”
“My wife’s just been murdered.”
 Ryan laughed.
“You ain’t in mourning.”
“Maybe it just doesn’t show.”
“Maybe it’s just that old shock thing again, freezing you up. Where
were you Monday before last? Evening into night.”
The quick change threw me for a second, then the meaning of the words
sank in. Monday night. Two days before she was found in the park. Totally
cool, I had an alibi.
“That was when she was killed?”
“Answer the fucking question. And you better hope it’s checkable.”
“I was working. Donut Haven on Wilshire, West Hollywood. Four till
midnight. You can check it with the guy who runs the place.”
“I will, but I gotta check something with you first.”
“What?”
“They found come in her guts.”
“She was a hooker, what do you expect?”
“I’m not talking about her pussy. I’m talking about that big hole in her
tum-tum. Looks like after she was gutted someone relieved themselves at
close range. Know what I’m saying?”
“Me, I suppose?”
“I’m hoping. But I tell you what, Jackie, I’m a guy who tries to see all
sides of a problem, you know, consider all possibilities. So I’m gonna give
you a chance to settle the spunk aspect.”
“Er … how?”
I had a feeling something bad was coming, and it did.
“We got come in her guts. The obvious step, obvious to me, anyhow, is
get a sample from you.”
“Sure, anything to help the investigation. What do I have to do, give
some blood?”
“I’m kinda picky about these kinda things. We find spunk, we should
match it against spunk. Call me old-fashioned.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m giving you a chance.”
“Jesus, all right … Where do I go?”
“Shit, Jackie, I don’t want to put you to any trouble. You can do it right
here.”
 “Are you serious?”
“It’s up to you. Of course, if you refuse it’s gonna be difficult for me not
to draw the obvious conclusion.”
“You want me to jerk off in the car?”
“Why not?”
“No way. This is too weird …”
“Say, have I shown you my gun?”
Ryan leaned over on one side of his ass and pulled a short revolver out
of a belt holster. The metal was dull. It looked well used. He twisted it in
the cabin light.
“Thirty-eight. Not as powerful as the Glocks the young guys carry, but
it does its job. Know how many people I’ve killed with it? Enough so I
have to use my toes to count.”
“This is like a subtle threat, right?”
“When I was fucking her I used to wonder what her old man was like,
what I was competing with, so to speak. Turns out he’s a worthless fuck
who won’t even cooperate solving her murder. I got two reasons to shoot
you, Jack. First, it would close the case. You tried to escape—you musta
been guilty. Second, I’d just like to do it. Now, if I was a guy sitting next to
a guy like me, I wouldn’t be arguing over a couple of teaspoons of love
juice. Get my meaning?”
“Okay, okay … Will you at least get out while I do it?”
“Can’t. Sorry. You might contaminate the sample in some way—
cigarette ash, say. And I don’t want to have to do this all over again. Here,
you can use this.”
Ryan took a plastic pharmacy jar from his pocket and handed it to me. It
was a safe bet that no cop on a bona fide investigation was going to collect
evidence like this. But there wasn’t much I could do. His gun was pointing
in my direction and I’d already painted myself into a corner by lying about
the tattoo. So … I got my dick out.
The starter bone from the tramp was long gone and getting hard was an
impossible task. I rubbed for a while and tried to think of something dirty,
but Ryan staring at me made it difficult to concentrate.
“I can’t do it with you watching.”
“Sure you can, you just need a kick-start.”
 He took a photo from his inside pocket and held it out. It showed a rear-
end view of a naked young woman, face down on a concrete floor, knees
drawn up under her chest, arms thrown stiffly out to each side. The angle of
the shot made it possible to see the blood that had run out of her mouth and
pooled around her head. She had a crowbar sticking out of her ass.
“Gang killing. South Central squadies like to pass these things around.
Kinda erotic, huh?”
Despite the sickness of the subject, Ryan was right. The flat, pitiless
quality of the lighting, the thick flesh of her cunt, the violated anus—all
combined to produce something that made my head swim. The horror of it
drew me out of the world for a while, blocked out Ryan long enough for me
to pump up.
After that it only took a minute to spurt into the jar. There was a lot and
some of it missed and splatted against the dash. The intensity of the orgasm
surprised me, but as soon as it was over I felt disgusted. Being watched
while you wank is as bad as taking a shit in front of someone.
“That’s the spirit, Jackie.”
Ryan put his gun away, screwed the top on the jar, and held it up to the
light.
“Nice and thick. Must have a high sperm count.”
“Can I go now?”
“Soon.”
“Jesus, what now? A stool sample?”
“Getting smart with me ain’t smart, Jackie. Did she know any doctors?”
“Her client list wasn’t in my top-ten chart of great books to read.”
“I’m trying pretty hard here, Jackie. Right now it’s the only thing
pointing away from you.”
“How’s that?”
“You saw the way she was cut. Coulda been someone with surgical
experience. A doctor, no?”
There was something so majorly unkosher about Ryan I was reluctant to
tell him anything, let alone stuff about illegal kidney operations. But I
figured a little info might put me in a better light.
“Maybe she did mention one. Over in Malibu, I think.”
“Oh, really? Got a name? An address?”
 “No. She didn’t talk about him. It was just like comments she made. I
don’t even know if his place was on the beach or in the hills.”
“You get a look at him? He ever come by to pick her up?”
“No.”
“Did she keep an address book, any sort of record of the guys she
fucked?”
“Not Karen. She wasn’t that organized.”
“This ain’t good. Not for you, anyway. Doesn’t give me anything to go
on. I guess I’ll just have to stick with you. Tell me, what was it like being
married to a whore?”
“Not good.”
“Could be it pushed you a little too far? Maybe she fucked a guy with a
big dick one night, came home and told you about it. And ’cause you ain’t
so long you flipped out with something sharp?”
“I didn’t kill her, Ryan.”
He smiled for a moment then nodded at the photo of the dead girl.
“A present.”
He got out of the car and walked off into a night that wasn’t distant or
insulated anymore. Everything in it was sharp and immediate and
dangerous. The kind of environment that looked like it would suit Ryan just
fine.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Six
Daytime, on the bed. I was interfacing, but at one remove, blurred and
borderline irritable behind a filter of pills. Lorn on the TV, on a tape. As
perfect as the teen sex visions on Nintendo. Talking about things that
possessed me. I lay on the bed like one of those slovenly filter-feeding fish,
gulping it in too fast to taste, but drawing bedrock nourishment from it all
the same.
Then Royston turned up to collect the rent—a little weasel of a guy who
owned a couple of properties along the coast and liked to keep a handle on
things via personal connection. He had a habit of pushing his head forward
and up that made the front of his neck bulge like the underside of a penis.
Black-framed coke-bottle glasses, hair that looked synthetic, a thin white
body that seemed to be always coiling and twisting and trying to escape its
clothes. He was in his thirties, but it was hard not to think of him as a child
—an idiot child, protected from life by his inability to appreciate the hassles
the rest of the world suffered.
I found it almost impossible to stay civil around him.
“Hiya, Jack, it’s that time of the month again.”
He laughed like he’d made a joke, a sort of braying noise.
“Yeah? I haven’t started bleeding yet. I must be late.”
“Oh, Jack, you’re wild. Come on, you know what I mean.”
He threw an air punch and made a growling noise like he appreciated
me playing along with him.
“This isn’t a good time.”
“Oh, wow, I can see that. You really should try to keep the place a bit
cleaner, you know. Is that chocolate pudding on your chest?”
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“Why don’t you open the blinds? It’s such a lovely day outside. The
sun’s shining, the birds are singing, and God’s in his heaven. That’s what
my mother used to say. The sun’s shin—”
I walked out of the room to get a beer from the fridge. I looked at the
pill jar and wondered if I could take enough to pass out before Royston
managed to bring himself to say the R-word. Unlikely, so I flipped a single
DF 118 and went back and fell on the bed. I was wearing stained, stretched-
out briefs that let my cock swing around. Royston avoided looking at my
crotch.
“You don’t look happy, Jack.”
“I got a few problems.”
“Oh, problems … Don’t we all? But, Jack, you know? Problems are just
things to overcome. Even the tough ones go away if you give them enough
time. Like, I had some water damage at my other property? And the living
room carpet was completely ruined. I could have let it get to me—I mean, it
was really nice carpet. I could have agonized over it and wondered why
something like that had to happen to me. But I chose not to. I made the
decision. Instead of letting it achieve major proportions, I acted straight
away, went right out and replaced it. End of problem. Say, where’s Karen?”
“Dead. Somebody cut her open, pulled out her guts, and blew a load
into the hole.”
For a moment his mouth worked silently, like he had to chew my words
out of the air to get past them. Then his voice started again on the end of a
shocked, indrawn breath.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to say things like that? They
might come true.”
He was sitting on the couch, he bounced up and down on the cushion.
“The springs are going in this.”
“Replace it, then.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad. I mean, it’s not out of place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you live at a certain level.”
“Everyone lives at a certain level.”
“You can’t expect a brand-new couch.”
“I’m not asking you to give it to me. This is a furnished apartment. I
pay rent, the furnishings should be at least halfway decent.”
“That’s what I’m saying. They are decent … For your level. I’m not
being shitty, Jack. It’s just the way of things. Come on, dude, this isn’t
important. Let’s do a number. I got this South African stuff. Total head. If
I’m lying I’m flying.”
 Royston thought smoking was the height of hipness and was prone to
ODing on slang when the subject came up. He pulled out a bag of grass and
some papers. Sharing a joint had become a habit on rent days. It made him
feel better about asking for the money, like we were really friends and the
rent was just incidental.
I didn’t like grass—too much love and too many flowers in its history.
Give me a member of the benzo family any day—something made in a
clinic, not a fucking herbal accident. Something with a zero-paranoia
quotient. But I figured if he was stoned he might be more flexible on the
issue of money. Plus I knew the asshole would keep whining until I agreed
to get fucked up with him.
“Get on with it, then.”
Royston dropped the bag of weed twice in his eagerness to get one
rolled.
We smoked and coughed and smoked. He didn’t know to take the seeds
out, so the joint exploded periodically and showered the carpet with burning
ash. Each time it happened he got down on his knees, clucking like a
chicken, and rubbed frantically at the singed spot.
By the time the joint was finished we were both pretty much confused.
Royston had a couple of hacking fits and kept taking his glasses off to wipe
his eyes. I got up and went to the kitchenette for another beer. My face felt
like it was sizzling and things darted about at the edge of vision. But they
were hard to catch and when I turned head-on they disappeared.
Out the back window the girl I’d seen before was on her balcony again.
She wore a few more clothes this time and was bent forward painting her
nails. The THC riding my bloodstream made it easy to project all the
sadness of the city onto her. With the glory of the setting sun thrown orange
against the walls around her, working so hard at something like painting
your nails seemed such a desperate thing to do. My thoughts chained out
along dope corridors and I was sure if I went over there and put my arm
around her she’d break down crying and everything would be all right in
her life from then on. I began to feel an overwhelming kinship with her.
Until she looked up, saw me watching her, and gave me the finger.
And then I was suddenly tired of it all—of other people, the noise of the
outside world, the evening light, fucking Royston and his fucking rent …
What I wanted was to drift, maybe watch some more TV, maybe look at the
picture of the dead girl with the crowbar up her ass.
I went back to the lounge with my drink.
“You were a long time, Jack.”
“I don’t have the rent.”
He looked like I’d slapped him, like it was something I just should not
have said.
“Oh … Well, er … Gee, Jack, that’s not something there’s much leeway
on. You know? I mean, it’s not that difficult, is it?”
“Karen really is dead.”
“Oh, Jack …”
“I mean it. She was killed.”
“Oh, boy.”
Royston started rubbing his palms backwards and forwards along the
tops of his thighs. He looked uncomfortably around the room like he was
hoping someone would come and rescue him.
“That’s … Oh, boy …”
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad.”
He stood up and scratched his head, other hand on his hip.
“I feel a bit manipulated here, Jack.”
“What?”
“Well, first you don’t have the rent, then you tell me Karen’s dead.”
“Well it’s true. I don’t have the rent and Karen is dead.”
“But you’re putting them together. There’s an implication.”
“Hey, I was only going to ask if I could make it up next month. You
won’t lose anything. It’s been a difficult time.”
“That’s not the way things work, Jack. That’s not the way of the world.
We have a contract, we have to work inside the rules it sets out. What
would happen if everybody did this? Chaos. Nobody’d pay rent.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“I don’t either, Jack. I’m really disappointed.”
“Jesus, Royston. A few weeks. Is it that much to ask?”
“It’s the principle. If I can’t trust you to pay on time, how can I trust that
you really will make it up?”
“I promise, okay? This is the first time in two years, for Christsake!”
He shook his head like this went against everything he’d ever held dear.
 “I can’t give you another month. It’s not possible. I’ll give you two
weeks, and that’s a favor, Jack. Okay?” He walked to the door, still shaking
his head. “Jeeze, I feel pretty upset.”
After he’d gone my rage boiled over. I felt belittled, I felt demeaned.
Something as trivial as an extension on the rent … I walked round and
round the room clenching my teeth, but it wouldn’t go away. In an effort to
calm myself I took out the photo Ryan had given me. I was instantly
transfixed. I held it with one hand and jerked off with the other. Standing in
the middle of the room. My spunk made a pattering sound when it fell on
the carpet.
And later I separated myself still further with gossip magazines—a
plunge into the pool of a better way of being.
Tom Cruise had booked the honeymoon suite at the Ritz in Paris and
filled it with flowers for a second honeymoon with Nicole. While in the
City of Love they spent a quarter of a million bucks on new clothes.
Rumors flew that Heather Locklear was pregnant, but the star herself was
being coy. Farrah Fawcett danced the night away at a Hollywood gay bar, as
sexy and athletic as ever. Tim Allen gave his wife a new Jag for her
birthday and Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith spent twenty-five
grand on furniture for baby Stella’s nursery. Ted Danson and Mary
Steenburgen dealt with marital tension arising from working on the same
TV show by sleeping in separate rooms on the weekend and not talking to
each other on Saturdays.
A few days after Royston’s visit I realized I was bored. Booze tasted stale,
my body felt soft, and the pill fog around my head was starting to bug me.
The fugue of the last week and a half had burned itself out and I was
suddenly tired of lying around. Like some cathartic dawn, the desire to be
out in the world again threw its light over me. I wanted a more active
distraction than TV. I wanted to participate in what I saw there.
I shaved, showered, and dressed. Late night. Black sky powdered
orange. Outside, taillights would be streaking the roads with journeys far
more exciting than those of the day—drug transportation, deals in the
backseat, fucks to be tracked down in bars and clubs and nailed on the wet
tiles beside pools in the hills, meetings to be kept or deliberately broken,
steps to be taken toward success or someone else’s destruction. Ah, the L.A.
night!
I stood on the steps in front of the apartment and breathed it in. It
smelled different. It was a different place from the city I’d known before
Karen’s death. Without the daily grind of a job, without the headfuck
detrition of worrying about accepted patterns of behavior, it had changed
from impenetrable monolith to become again a place where anything might
happen—a glittering arena of streetlights, headlights, lighted windows, and
neon.
The Prelude fired up first go—smooth function Nippon tech. I let it idle
and thought about Karen.
Dead in a park shortly after an illegal kidney operation. The scar on her
belly and all her organs removed. It wasn’t hard to come up with a scenario
—Karen dumps her kidney, comes home and tells me about it, we fight and
she splits, she gets back in touch with the doc, then something goes down
and he wastes her. Seemed logical to me. The operation and the killing were
close in time. The wounds might have been made by a surgeon. And who
better to have a motive for such thorough body emptying than someone
who wanted to obliterate all traces of an illegal operation?
I had a feeling I’d linked these thoughts for a reason, but right then I
wasn’t sure what it was. So I rolled the windows down and hit the road and
hoped the night air would blow them away.
For a short time I felt free. There was nothing to stop me from driving
forever if I wanted to—no alarm clock, no doughnut boss. My actions had
so little impact on the world around me I felt outside time. What did it
matter when I stopped, where I went, what I did? Without ties to one of the
visual media industries I was irrelevant to the city.
North on Lincoln, east on Santa Monica, all the way to Hollywood and
the drag.
Prime time, around twelve. Parallel with Hollywood Boulevard, a few
streets south, the drag was hot. Its littered half-mile of fake fronting and
excessive wattage crawled with buyers and sellers like a radiant, maggot-
riddled carcass. Porn theaters, fast-food joints, a couple of bars, hard-eyed
men with rough skin and too many rings on their fingers. And hookers,
hookers, hookers.
 Cars rolled slowly, close to the curb, viewing the trade. Cunt, pussy,
snatch … Hunted by all the types the city could throw up. College kids
crammed six to a car, hanging out the windows, whistling and yelling and
banging the door panels with the palms of their hands, bringing with them
the only innocence the drag ever saw, out to get a friend laid, or find some
slag-heap bitch who’d do a carload cut price. The pros, the regular
customers, confident and relaxed, alone or with a buddy, calling the girls by
name, cool in their negotiations, explicit in their demands. They were going
to get what they paid for, sure as shit. And the guys who took it a whole lot
more seriously. Always alone, windows shut, until the need got bad enough
to force that final swoop up to a woman they’d already passed ten times that
night. Hot in the car, sweaty, driving with a hard-on, risking a job or a wife
or the house or the kids, but unable to stop themselves. Sex as a drug, dirty
and dangerous and built on fucked-up psych foundations—shit hanging
over from childhood. Sickos and sneaks, yeah, but they were the real face
of drag consumption. Unlike the kids and the goodtimers whose laughing
transactions did not cut beyond the flashy first layer of the whore animal,
these desperate men were its bone and muscle. They were the truth of what
went on here, the true counterparts of the whores. Pain slotting into pain.
The pimps in their cars. The junkies sitting hunched over untouched
black coffees in tired diners whose toilet walls were smeared with carbon
from the bottoms of spoons and laced with the red feather-trails of flushed
syringes. The odd old guys who always hang near pussy or drugs, feeding
off a nerved voracity they mistake for excitement and youth. The liquor
store owners with their shotguns—pilot fish around the shark—who prayed
at the start of each night to just make it through one more alive. The
Mexicans who slopped out and swept up in the porn shows and the fuck
rooms, smoking roll-ups or small dark cigars in a snatched five minutes on
the steps of a side entrance, leaning on their brooms, so tired they might
never move again. The cops, few and far between, mirror shades even at
night, thick forearms pale from long-term night duty, chewing gum. And
cruising like all the rest.
I parked at the western end of the street, in the lot of an abandoned dress
factory. Around here the drag false-started with a handful of fast-food
vendors and fuck-mag shops, hauling itself out of a shadowed nothingness
of low-rise office blocks and failed businesses like some beast from a
swamp—the start of a curve that peaked about a quarter-mile east, then
tailed off again into other unlit and forsaken nighttime areas of the city.
There were fewer people here, the trawling cars cut in from cross-streets
further up. It took about five minutes walking to get to where the action
started.
The drag wasn’t new to me. On really bad nights when my imagination
ran wild and the hours gorged themselves on my loneliness, I’d sometimes
come looking for Karen here, full of doomed persuasions to bring her
home. But this was the first time I’d come to willfully immerse myself in its
two-way tug of avarice and desire. I wanted reassurance, some sort of
affirmation that the city existed as more than a work-ethic—ed middle-class
construction. And the drag was the place to get it. The rabid, hungering
impulses that shaped people’s behavior ran closer to the surface here. They
made it a big fuck you to the mainstream.
The whores stood like bored hitchhikers at the curb or lounged against
the walls of sex shops and nude-encounter parlors in clothes designed to
attract attention and give quick access. Around them light and sound moved
like the weather—sequential waves of glare from bars and theaters, the
bellowings of strip-show callers who stood like small tugs in greasy dinner
jackets and went on about snatch and ass and complementary drinks. Some
of the girls were dogs and some of them were beautiful, they all looked like
they’d rather be someplace else.
Sex was graded on the drag—straightish hetero action where all the
light was. And then in the small streets that ran away from this light, stuff
that was a whole lot heavier—specialist basement theaters that ran S&M,
animal, shit, and piss. And lurking in the shadows near these places, people
who could make the images real. Further east, the pedestrian traffic all but
died out and the drag foundered in a stretch of vacant lots and occasional
bars. But it wasn’t dead. The boys kept it alive.
Jeans and T-shirts, the occasional gleam of leather. Most of them young.
On corners or against chain-link fences, one knee bent, foot flat against a
wall, thumbs in belt loops, fingers straying to brush crotches if a car
slowed, purposely stereotypical. Here there were no theaters, no shows, no
specialty rubber goods stores, no pimps, no criers. Just men, smoking and
waiting.
 I’d never been this far along—it was hardly a place where Karen would
have had much success—and it felt weird knowing men in cars might be
looking at me and contemplating sex.
About ten yards ahead a Merc SEC 560 pulled up opposite a guy with a
blond crew cut and slid its window down. I stopped to watch. It seemed
things went pretty much the same as with the female whores, only it was
quicker and there was less jive. I couldn’t hear what they said, but it must
have been cool with both of them because the guy in the car opened the
door and the crew cut climbed in. As the Merc pulled away I could see the
silhouette of the driver’s arm through the rear window, reaching across the
seats.
I watched the car disappear wondering what, exactly, they were going to
do and how much money was going to change hands. I’d never fucked a
man, but I was down to my last twenty, facing possible eviction. And it
seemed simple enough. You stood around, the business came to you. And
once you got in the car? Mostly sucking and yanking, I guessed—actions
with about as much significance as shaking hands. Easy money.
I found myself an empty stretch of wall and leaned against it. I had no
real plan, I just wanted to see what would happen. A few of the closest
bum-boys looked sideways at me, but it didn’t mean much. If looks could
kill the whole world would be dead.
Cars rolled by like counters in a game. Guys on either side of me got
lucky. I was better looking, but they were younger. I didn’t care, the night
was warm and it was better out here with the freaks than guzzling beer I
couldn’t afford in a sweaty apartment.
Nothing happened for a while. And then it did.
“Hey.”
A black Lexus had pulled up and a heavy-set guy in his forties was
leaning across the passenger seat, pointing his face at me.
“Yeah you. You want business, or what?”
Now that it was happening it didn’t seem quite so simple. I thought
about walking off, but that would have meant kissing goodbye to the
money, and it would have been embarrassing in front of the other guys.
“Come closer for fucksake, I’m not going to shout across the fucking
street all fucking night. You don’t like money, or what?”
 I walked over and bent to window level. He was bigger than me, too big
to beat the shit out of if things went wrong. And things could go wrong, I
realized suddenly. There might be plenty of things I wouldn’t want to do
with a guy like this, and saying no when his dick got hard wouldn’t cut
much ice.
“How much you got?”
“Huh?”
“How big’s your fucking dick?”
“About average, I suppose.”
“In inches.”
“Seven.”
He looked a little dubious.
“That ain’t so big. But maybe we can still do business. You spunked up
already tonight? If I’m paying for it I like a good solid wad. You driving
with a full tank, or what?”
I was close enough to smell him and he didn’t smell good. In fact, he
smelled of shit. I was becoming less enthusiastic about the whole thing by
the second.
“What do you want to do?”
“Get in the fucking car. You’re going to get us busted. How old are you,
anyway?”
“I want to know before I get in.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. I could find someone else.”
I just stood there and looked at him and hoped he would. After a
moment he shrugged.
“Felching. I pay good money and that’s what I want.”
I decided right then to walk. Sticking my head between the sweaty,
hairy, shit-stinking cheeks of this guy’s ass and sucking my come out of his
hole wasn’t what I’d planned as my introduction to male prostitution.
He must have read my face.
“What’s the matter? You think there’s something wrong with that? It’s a
normal impulse! What the fuck are you out here for anyway? You think it’s
funny jerking people around?”
He had his head almost out the passenger window. Some of his spit hit
my cheek. I backed away and headed up the street, opposite the flow of
traffic so he couldn’t follow me. I heard his engine roar. He was still yelling
as he took off. The bum-boys loved it.
I circled the block, came out back on the drag a hundred yards further
east of where I’d been standing, and found a bar. It didn’t feel particularly
welcoming, but I was tired of walking and there wasn’t anything else close.
I bought a drink and took it to a stool near the front window.
I was pissed off about the Lexus episode. If the guy had wanted a
simple blow job I’d have been sitting there with extra dollars in my pocket
and maybe the start of a new career under my belt. Instead, I was burning
up what little money I had left just to have somewhere to rest.
Around the borders of the window neon beer signs ticked on and off. I
stared blindly out at the street, drinking my beer, wishing I had enough
money to get drunk. Until someone did a double-take outside and tapped on
the glass.
Rex.
He came into the bar, Rodeo dressed and looking polished enough to
pass for healthy. Same as every time I saw him, I wondered why he wasn’t
on TV.
“Dude. Maintaining?”
“Sort of.”
“Strange place to find you.”
“Yeah, well …”
He looked knowing, then leaned over the bar and ordered doubles and
chasers for both of us. When he handed mine over he looked concerned.
“Do we talk about Karen?”
“We don’t have to avoid it, if that’s what you mean.”
“Cool. I wasn’t sure … I keep thinking about her.”
“Hey, from the start? We both know you weren’t super-friends.”
“Well, jeez, man, I know that. But it doesn’t stop you caring.”
“I know. I’m just saying.”
“That’s okay. The proprietary thing’s normal early on.”
“Proprietary thing?”
“Wanting to own the dead person. Not let anyone else feel she was as
important to them as she was to you.”
“I don’t want to own her. Fuck … I’m glad she’s gone.”
 “Okay, okay …” He held his hands up, backing off. “Maybe when I said
I’d been thinking about her I meant not about her, but about, you know,
actually dying. About the reality of it. You know what I see when I think
about it? I don’t see her. I see the edge of a cliff. You know? A precipice.
And it’s like there’s this huge gravitational pull on me to jump off.”
“That’s normal early on, the open door thing.”
“Well, I’m trying not to, man. But, I don’t know … Every day’s the
same. You know what I mean? It’s just the same every day. Even if
something really different happens, even if it’s something really good, it’s
still the same.”
“I saw her body. I went to the morgue.”
“Fuck … That must have been a trip.”
“Yeah, she looked pretty bad.”
“Wow …”
Rex drank silently for a moment, then:
“You have to talk to the cops or anything like that?”
“I talked to one guy.”
“They okay with you? I mean, they don’t like suspect you, do they?”
“I don’t know … It was so left field, so unofficial. I mean, this guy was
fucking weird.”
“Maybe it’s better that way. Less shit for you to deal with. Wasn’t her
father one?”
“Fuck, who knows. She said something once, but you know what she
was like.”
“Well, not really, man. I wasn’t like her superfriend, after all.”
He smirked and punched me lightly on the arm. And I laughed and felt
good that there was someone close enough to me to make that kind of joke.
Rex tapped his shot glass on the bar.
“Your round, dude.”
“Can’t, sorry. I quit work.”
“Ah …”
Rex ordered the drinks himself, then turned back looking satisfied.
“Time to fess up, dude. What are you doing down here?”
“Hanging out.”
“No one comes here to hang out. I was scoring, but you don’t have the
money for that. So if I had to take a guess, I’d say you were looking for an
alternative source of income.”
“I was thinking about it.”
“Hah.” Rex clapped his hands. “It’s about time, I never could
understand why you stayed poor so long. You’re great looking, you’ve got a
nice body.”
“It’s taking that final step, I guess.”
“What step? It doesn’t mean anything, Jack. You don’t get struck dead
for it. And you might as well be able to buy drugs and nice clothes as not.
You’re wasting your time on the drag, though.”
“Why?”
“It’s a place for junkies and losers. You trick here if you’ve got nothing
else going or you don’t know any better. Those guys out there’ll be lucky to
have five bucks left tomorrow morning. I know, man, it’s where I started.
You can survive, but you won’t make any real money. Agency work is
where the bread is.”
Rex looked at me for a moment, then swallowed the last of his drink.
“You got a car here, right?”
“Er, yeah.”
“Okay. I got a gig off Mulholland. The Porsche is in the shop and I was
going to take a cab, but I’m going to do you a favor instead. Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
I was a little drunk by this time and things seemed to be accelerating.
“To take some money off someone who can afford to give it to us.”
“You want me to fuck someone with you?”
“If you want to get into it, this is your chance. Don’t worry, I know
these people, they won’t mind an extra bod, believe me.”
“They?”
“A couple.”
“Shit, I don’t know …”
“What are you going to do if you don’t? Go home broke and have a
wank? Come with me and you get to fuck a woman, take drugs, and make
some money. I’ll split it fifty-fifty. Where’s the choice? Come on, dude.
Time to shit or cut bait.”
Put that way it seemed stupid to refuse.
“Got any coke?”
“But of course.”
We walked out into the tawdry drag night.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Seven
West on Hollywood, then north up Laurel Canyon and into the hills. A cool
drive through some of the best of L.A.
The road twisted as it climbed. Tight one-lane streets veined off it into
gullies or up rises where box-sided sixties and seventies architecture leaned
against the slopes on death-wish stilts. Flatland Beverly Hills had more
ostentation and the money in Bel Air was older, but you couldn’t beat the
Hollywood Hills for atmosphere.
From the street the houses didn’t give much away. They were built with
their backs to the world, screened by eucalyptus and pepper trees. If they
showed any windows at all, they were narrow and the light coming through
them was gentle and masked. Driving through the area was an exercise in
imagination. Whoever they were, whatever they did, it was a sure bet the
people here lived lives worth filming, that they had strings of lovers and
unlimited earning potential.
The booze from the bar and the night air blowing through the open
windows made me feel young. I was alive and excited, it seemed absurd to
me now that I had spent the last two weeks lying in bed when I could have
been doing something like this—rubbing up against the outsides of perfect
lives.
“I’m a little over the limit.”
Rex smiled dreamily. “Who cares? I always feel kind of hopeful driving
fucked up. Increases your chances of winning that lottery.”
“You might hit someone who doesn’t want to die.”
“True, but if you drink enough you don’t worry about that.”
Rex got his coke out. I closed the windows and he stuck some on the
corner of a credit card under my nose. The road was straight for a little way
so I held the wheel with my knees and did it. Call me irresponsible.
A few minutes later we hit the Hollywood Bowl overlook and the city
lay spread out below us like a carpet of jewels, an infinite sprawl of light
that rose gigantically at its center in the towers of downtown. I pulled over.
The gates to the overlook were locked but there was space at the side of the
road. We got out, hooked our fingers through the mesh of the fence, and
gazed.
At any time the city was awesome, but at night, when darkness removed
the comparison of the horizon, it became a construct of light that simply
overpowered vision—a glittering prize for all the owners of the houses in
the hills.
“Incredible.”
Rex grunted. “Gives me the creeps. All those people spinning around as
fast as they can go. I mean, you figure when you think about yourself
there’s some importance to being human. But when you see it like this and
there’s so many people … We can’t all be worth something. We’re ants,
man.”
“Not if you’re Bruce or Arnold.”
“I reckon it’s all hell on earth, no matter who you are.”
We did some more blow at the fence, then got back in the car.
The house was at the end of a quietly lit lane off the downhill side of
Mulholland. It was large and white—replica Spanish surrounded by
subtropical foliage. Two wings angled back from a central block, away
from the road, spread open toward the city.
We left the car in the drive and headed for a black oak door that had
iron studs in the wood.
“Isn’t it a bit late?”
“This kind of thing happens when it’s late.”
“Looks like bread.”
“They’re industry.”
“Cool. How do you know them?”
“They ring the agency and order what they want. If they like you, you
get to come back. For fucksake, don’t start asking them what they do. How
do you feel?”
“Pretty fast.”
“Just go with it. They’ll love it that you’re new.”
The door was opened by a small-boned man of medium height who
looked extremely wired. He wore a carefully faded cotton shirt open
halfway down his chest, his hair was sandy and thin. I didn’t recognize him.
If he worked in film it had to be on the other side of the camera. He waved
us in and closed the door. He moved in an abrupt, exaggerated fashion, like
he found it difficult to control his limbs.
“Well, it’s about time. And who’s this young man?”
He smiled at me and jerked his hand forward. His grip was way too
tight.
“Ron, this is Jack. I had car trouble and he gave me a ride. You get him
too, no extra charge.”
“Hello, Jack. You look like a healthy fellow. Do you like teaching
people how to behave? Of course you do, of course you do. You wouldn’t
be here otherwise, would you? Yes, I’m sure you know how to treat people
who haven’t been quite as good as they should have been.”
I looked at Rex and saw his left eye twitch.
“You bet.”
After that the three of us stood in a brittle silence. Ron shifted from foot
to foot, like he’d forgotten what to do next.
Rex cleared his throat. “Er, Ron …”
“Oh, yes. Jesus. God, sorry. Money first, of course. Nothing extra for
Jake, you say? I mean Jack. Sorry, Jack. Nothing extra?”
“If you feel you’d like to, Ron. It’s entirely up to you. Don’t feel
pressured.”
“Well, maybe a little something, then.”
Rex took the folded bills Ron held out and slipped them into his pocket
without counting them. Everyone acted as though the money didn’t matter. I
tried to check denominations, but it happened too fast.
“So, let’s go through.”
At the end of the entrance hall we went left through an arch into a high-
ceilinged room that ran clear to the back of the building and ended in a
glass wall that showed L.A. floating above a stretch of dark canyon.
Harsh light, white stone walls, varnished blond-wood floor. Very little
furniture—a bar in an alcove, a white leather couch against one wall, a low
coffee table that held an oversize douche bag, fat with water. The room felt
like an art gallery without paintings.
Centered in the barren expanse of floor was something that looked like
a customized gynecological examination table—three feet high, four feet
long, surrounded by a chrome-steel framework that held a pair of stirrups.
And on the table, a naked woman.
 From her body she looked to be mid-thirties, good condition. I couldn’t
tell from her face because she was wearing a fitted black leather hood. It
didn’t have any eyeholes, but it had a couple for her nose and a closed
zipper over her mouth. Her feet were strapped into the stirrups and pulled
so far back her knees almost touched her shoulders. Her anus was plainly
visible. Handcuffs locked her arms to another part of the framework behind
her head.
Rex took off his jacket and sat on the couch.
“Does she need the same as last time?”
Ron was over at the bar picking up glasses and things.
“I think she deserves it, don’t you?”
“I certainly do.”
Rex grinned at me while Ron’s back was turned.
I stayed standing and looked at the woman on the table until Ron
brought the booze over. Under the halogen she didn’t look real, it was hard
to think of her as human.
The drinks were strong—vodka, lime juice, ice. Rex watched me over
his glass to see how I was taking it.
“Do you hear us, my love? They’re here, two of them this time. That’ll
teach you, won’t it? We’re all looking at you.”
Ron’s voice rose as he spoke, he had to struggle to keep himself from
shouting. He paused for a second to regain control.
“In a little while I’ll let them start, but first we’re going to have a drink.
Don’t worry, we won’t leave you alone.”
The woman’s tits lifted rapidly with her breathing.
“Okay, let’s get you fellows fired up.”
From a drawer in the coffee table he took a bag of insulin syringes, a
few vials of sterile water, and a couple of gram-wraps of coke.
It was hot in the room—Californian nighttime balminess on top of
under-floor heating. Outside, deep night silence ate away at our connection
with the rest of the world.
Ron watched the woman flinch at the small sounds he made opening the
vials. Her tension seemed to please him. When the water was a quarter-inch
deep in the bottom of a tumbler he opened one of the wraps and dumped it
in, stirring with a syringe plunger until it was dissolved. The rubber end
squeaked against the glass.
 I helped myself to the vodka bottle, chugged a couple of mouthfuls. It
burned my throat and made my eyes water, but things were hotting up and I
wanted to be loose. Ron handed out the works.
“Don’t worry about a filter, this stuff’s pharmaceutical. Help
yourselves.” Then, calling across the room: “These boys are going to be
ripped, pussycat. I hope I can control them.”
The woman shifted position slightly. The stirrups and the handcuffs
clinked.
Ron had to tie off, but Rex and I could find veins by making a fist.
I slid the needle in, a slight sting in the crook of my elbow. Pulled back
a little on the plunger to check I was connected—blood expanded in a thick
con trail through the clear solution. I looked over at Rex before I let rip. He
was waiting for me. We hit simultaneously, Rex giving me a smile like, here
we go, dude, hang on.
Bang. Head and chest expanding. A pleasant flash of nausea that fades
as soon as it comes. Superman. Clarity and blurred reality at the same time.
I wanted to do it. I wanted to fuck the woman right then, before the rush
wore off, before my scrubbing organs robbed me of its insulation.
Ron’s forehead shone. Eyes on stalks, no irises, bunched muscles at the
corner of his jaw. We were all the same.
“Get ready, darling, here they come.”
The woman opened and closed her legs as much as the stirrups would
allow. Rex nudged me, stood up, and stripped. He was half hard already. I
dropped my clothes in a pile on the floor. Ron was still sitting and my dick
swung in front of his face.
“This first.”
He handed Rex the douche bag.
“Clean her out before you start.”
All three of us stood around the woman. She knew we were close.
Troughs appeared on her thighs and arms as she strained against her bonds
and the different muscle groups separated. Ron hadn’t taken his clothes off
and his hard-on stretched the material of his trousers.
Rex was acting like he knew what to do and I wondered how often he’d
worked his way through this scene. Ron’s apparent hatred of the woman
looked real, but there was something calculated about the scene, something
arranged. Fit and fighting, she would have been too much for our host to
maneuver into bondage. She must have allowed it to happen.
The booze and the coke were peaking, making things easy for me. Rex,
all business now, moved in with the douche bag.
“Hold her open, dude.”
Her cunt was wet and my fingers slipped twice before I had her spread.
The white plastic nozzle slid between my fingers and into her. Rex
squeezed the bag.
She took about half a pint before it started to come out, gushing around
the edge of the nozzle and drooling off the table to spatter on the varnished
floor with a sound like thick rain.
“That’s right, Rex, wash the bitch out. How does it feel to be clean,
bitch? She wants to be clean. Don’t you, my love? You want to be clean?”
The woman made a noise that sounded like yes.
When half the water was gone, Rex did the same thing to her ass. This
time the water didn’t come out.
Ron had a cigarette going and was smoking like someone unaccustomed
to the habit. Short drags with his eyes screwed up. Puff, puff, puff. He
handed it to me and nodded at the woman. I looked at Rex.
“Her foot.”
“With this?”
“It’s what they want.”
I hesitated, the cigarette’s tip glowed bright red through a gray dust of
dead ash. I scanned the room for a sign to tell me whether or not I should go
through with it. But nothing hinted one way or the other. And at that
moment I was overwhelmed by the pointlessness of trying to choose right
over wrong. Why bother? What possible difference could what happened to
this woman make to me?
“Do it, dude.”
I felt like a puppet, something without choice.
I pressed the cigarette against the tender skin on the arch of her foot.
She convulsed, lifting herself into the air, blasting water from her ass in a
stuttering, shitty gout that arced several feet beyond the table.
“Yes! Goddamn, she needed that.”
Ron hopped from foot to foot and actually clapped his hands. Inside her
hood the woman shrieked. Rex raised an eyebrow at me.
 “Interesting, huh?”
Ron produced a couple of novelty condoms, one with a head like an
elephant, one like a chicken.
“These boys are pumped, pussycat. You’re going to get reamed. You
want the new one first?”
She moved her head in an awkward nodding motion.
“Yes, I thought so. In you go, Jake. Let me help you.”
I stood at the end of the table, Ron took hold of my dick and guided it
into her. His fingers lingered for the first few strokes.
“That’s it, fella. Give it to her. Jam it in as hard as you can. That’s the
way she likes it. Harder. Burn the shit out of her.”
I made it pretty energetic, but it wasn’t good enough for Ron. He
shouted and waved his arms like he was rooting for a football team until I
was slamming it in so hard my thighs made a slapping sound against her ass
and the table rocked. At each impact the woman grunted. By the time I’d
finished her gash looked raw and slack.
“Feel cleaner, my love? Did it scrape away some of that pus in there?
Here comes number two.”
Same thing, with Ron jigging about and the woman making animal
noises, except Rex was in her ass. After a while she started to fart with each
of his thrusts.
We broke for booze and another shot of coke, then swapped holes and
did it all over again.
At the end, Rex and I stood like drooping matadors over an exhausted
bull. Ron lit another cigarette. He had his dick out and looked slightly
ludicrous wanking and jetting smoke at the same time.
“Don’t keep me waiting, man.”
He held the cigarette out to me. I felt drained and jittery from the coke,
stale from the booze. I wanted to be gone. I started to take it but Rex pushed
me aside.
“I’ll do it, Ron.”
“Whatever. Just do it, for godsake.”
Ron stood by the woman’s head, up on his toes, putting all of himself
behind his dick. Rex blew on the end of the cigarette, then, avoiding my
eyes, spread her labia and pushed it against her clit. I heard a small hiss as
the coal hit pussy juice.
 She pissed herself and jerked around on the table like she’d been
electrocuted. The sounds she made behind her mask were really quite
frightening. Ron groaned and spurted white come over the black leather of
her face.
Out in the night again.
“I’ll drive.”
“Sure.”
I wasn’t going to argue. My body ached and my head hummed with
post-coke emptiness. I could do without the hassle of driving.
“Got any Valium?”
“Jacket pocket.”
Rex pulled out onto Mulholland and headed in the opposite direction to
home.
“Wrong way.”
“Helps me unwind. Just for a while, okay?”
I tapped out two yellow pills from a brown plastic tube and swallowed
them with some of the vodka Ron had let us take when we left. Two didn’t
seem much, so I did two more. Rex took the same and finished the booze. I
chucked the bottle out the window and watched it explode against the side
of the road like something heavy thrown into a lake. There was a long hour
till dawn and the sky was a sick gray lid. Around us the hillsides were
developing like some scene in a retarded Polaroid photo. We drove in
silence for a couple of miles, letting the pills take hold.
“What did you think?”
“Was she really into it?”
“Of course. Easy money, huh?”
“Are they all like that?”
“Some are, some are different. You did good.”
“What’s she look like under the mask?”
“I’ve never seen her.”
“They must have an interesting relationship.”
“I guess it’s one way to keep a marriage alive.”
“Sure, as long as you’ve got the money to feel safe doing it.”
“What safe? They’re not killing each other.”
 “Yeah, but to be okay with it you’ve got to be able to step outside the
usual morality. And that’s not something everyone can afford.”
“You’re saying money buys them out of right and wrong?”
“Out of other people’s ideas of it.”
“Man, you romanticize it too much. When it comes down to it, they’re
just people, same as everyone else.”
“Bullshit. Can you see some guy, like some sanitation guy or
something, coming home and his wife, who’s been scrubbing floors all day,
letting him tie her up and burn her cunt with a cigarette? Fuck, there’d be
all kinds of shit to pay. Police, domestic violence, sexual abuse … That one
act would change everything for them. But rich people aren’t affected the
same way. They can segment. They can indulge without fucking up the rest
of their lives. Tomorrow Ron and his wife will wake up and she’ll be sore
as hell, but I bet they’ll be having breakfast in some chichi nook off
Melrose as though nothing ever happened.”
“Well, I won’t be out looking for them. Jesus, I’m wrecked.”
He U-turned and we tried for home. Pilled out, it didn’t matter to either
of us that our speed was below twenty-five. Five minutes later Rex nodded
off at the wheel and it became obvious we weren’t going to make the
distance. I elbowed him awake.
“Pull over.”
He snapped his head up and did his best to focus. When he spoke his
voice sounded like mine—slurred.
“Are you hungry, dude?”
“I can’t tell.”
“Me either.”
“We did too much Valium.”
“Nah, not after that coke.”
“Let’s pull over.”
“Yeah.”
We drove for another half mile while Rex summoned the motivation to
change from a mobile situation to a stationary one. By the time he managed
it we were back at the Hollywood Bowl overlook. We parked up close to
the fence.
An angled vista of city dawn.
Engine off. Systems shut down.
 “Holy fuck.”
“These seats recline.”
“Thank god.”
The sun was high when I woke and the air in the car was stale. Through the
windshield downtown L.A. was a dark ghost behind a curtain of smog.
Rex was gone, but he’d left a business card and some money on the
dash. I counted the money—three hundred dollars—and read what he’d
written on the card: “Use the number. Getting a lift with tourists.” I flipped
it over. Black on white, expensive letters. A phone number and the words
“Bel Air Escorts.” The area code wasn’t Bel Air, though. I stuck it in my
pocket with the money.
The overlook gates were open now. I got out of the car, walked through
a group of sleek Japanese in the parking lot, and climbed the steps to the top
of the sandstone outcrop. Cicadas buzzed in the scrub around me and down
in its dirty brown bowl the city hustled ten million people through another
day.
Despite the body mileage I’d clocked up last night I felt good. I ran
scenes in my head and marveled at them—my cock, her cunt, my fingers
holding the cigarette against her foot. I’d done it, I’d crossed the line
between accepted behavior and behavior most of the population would
consider a lynching offense, and that morning I felt as real as any of the
men in the Escape commercials. It had been dirty and nasty but I wanted
more.
I looked over my shoulder to check the car, another coach-load of
tourists was squeezing its way through the gate and I was worried about my
paintwork. Reflected sun made bright ovals on the windows and
heliographed memories of Karen at me. She would be underground by now,
flapping chest and skinny limbs bundled into a county grave that I would
never visit. But she’d bought me a car with money earned by selling her
kidney and I couldn’t forget her completely. Same as I couldn’t forget I’d
forced her from the apartment that night—an action that almost certainly
had its place in the chain of events that led to her murder.
I realized then why yesterday evening I’d put together what I knew of
her death. Karen to live with had been a nightmare, but Karen dead could
be used as an escape. Tracking down her killer wasn’t something I expected
to succeed at, but the simple doing of it, the attempt alone, had the potential
to give me again what I’d experienced at Ron’s—life outside the
mainstream. If I ever found the person responsible I wouldn’t know what to
do with them, but that didn’t matter. What I wanted from her death was a
reason to move in a world where the usual social obediences didn’t apply.
An excuse to go places, to ask questions, to do something other than lie in
bed all day.
And to finance this withdrawal from all things good and clean and
American? I had three hundred bucks in my pocket and the number for Bel
Air Escorts. Rex had told me I’d be good at it. Man, I’d be a natural.
Down from the lookout. The first cluster of Japanese had been replaced
by another. I walked through them, half a foot taller and full of alien
thoughts about the pointlessness of community.
Inside the Prelude I felt protected.
The seats were warm, they wrapped around.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Eight
A phone booth in West L.A. I’d stopped because the confidence I felt at the
overlook had become infected with thoughts of Ryan. Maybe it was just
chemical residue paranoia, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I should tie up
the loose ends of my old life before embarking on a journey out of it. By
now Ryan would have confirmed my alibi, and that my spunk wasn’t the
same as the stuff they found in Karen. I knew I’d check out okay, but I
wanted to hear it from him. I needed to be reassured he wasn’t going to be
following me any further down the line.
His ID badge had made him part of the Santa Monica Police
Department. I dialed info and asked for the homicide section. And things
got immediately weird. He didn’t work there. The guy I spoke to said the
only Ryan at the station was a member of the minor vice team.
“Would they be dealing with that girl who got killed in Palisades Park a
couple of weeks ago? The one that was cut open?”
“Not a chance. We catch all the murders. If you got information you
better talk to Detective Sullivan, he’s the officer in charge of that case.
What’s your name?”
It seemed so much simpler to hang up rather than answer. So I did. Then
I rang the switchboard again and asked for Ryan in minor vice. The
extension rang for a long time before it was picked up.
“Yeah?”
“Ryan?”
“Not in. Try tomorrow.”
“Ryan’s like this fat guy with black hair, right? Takes heart pills.”
“Yeah, that’s him. Who’s calling?”
“I’ve got some info on that case he’s working. The murder in Palisades
Park.”
“Murder?” The man laughed. “You got the wrong guy.”
“I’m sure it was Ryan.”
“Not unless it happened in a porno store. Try homicide.”
I didn’t have to hang up this time, the guy beat me to it.
 I stood in the booth for a while trying to decide whether I should be
relieved or frightened. I hadn’t heard from anyone called Sullivan, and he’d
had plenty of time to show up. So I figured the police department as a
whole didn’t have a handle on me. That was cool, but what did it leave? A
psycho like Ryan gone rogue with me as the focus of his obsession? Had I
become his independent pet project?
I got back in the car and headed home. I needed a shower and some
sleep.
On the ocean side of Lincoln Boulevard that morning Venice had a
dusty feel, like a reluctantly reinhabited ghost town. Maybe when I first
moved there it held some kind of mystery or romance for me. But that had
changed. What had not been gradually eroded during my time with Karen
had now, I found, been finished off in the incinerating flash of last night’s
sex and this morning’s epiphany. Now it was hollow and untenanted, a
place to pass through, to move away from.
I’d caught a radio rundown of the latest news on the way back from the
hills. Mel Gibson was getting twenty-five million for Ransom, Macaulay
Culkin was hanging out for his eighteenth birthday when he’d get his hands
on sixty of the same, and Michael Jackson was estimated to be personally
worth two hundred and fifty.
The sums of money jammed my head. When I was younger I used to
play the game of deciding what I’d do with ten million dollars, certain that
one day I’d have at least that much. I’d plan in infinitesimal detail the exact
steps I’d take, the order of my purchases, the choices between the unlimited
alternatives so much money would open up. But now, at a failed thirty,
those kind of hyperrealistic imaginings brought with them a depression too
exhausting to bear. Along with the news about Ryan, the reports of other
people’s wealth fucked my mood completely.
I took two Seconals and climbed into bed. A shower would have to
wait.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Nine
It was dark when I woke. I lay for a while watching the colored washes of
light that the cars down in the street threw across my ceiling like opening
Japanese fans. My head was clear. I ran my hands over my body. It felt
ready for action.
Time to motivate.
Shit, shower, teeth, shave. A can of cold Pepsi and two cigarettes in the
warm night air by the window, silent TV alight in the corner of the room.
People moving outside. I imagined how they felt—suntanned skin smooth
and dry after daylong beaching, frictionless under freshly washed denim
and soft cotton, happily heading for bars and movies.
I ate some food in front of the open fridge and thought about Brad Pitt
and Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise. How much more keenly they must be
feeling this same night air that lay against my skin. Their senses would be
more finely attuned to it than mine, undulled by the exhaustions that plague
the poor—food, rent, taxes, tires for the car … And if anything like that did
make it into their world, they had maids and personal assistants to deal with
it.
I got kind of caught up with those thoughts for a while and it was pretty
late by the time I left the apartment and started the game of looking for
Karen’s killer.
I didn’t know any of Karen’s friends well enough to have their phone
numbers, but from the early days, when she and I were still attempting the
charade of a shared existence, I had an idea where I might connect with one
or two of them. Karen had been part of a loosely knit group that hung out in
the same places, listened to the same music, and shared similar interests—
drugs, money, leather clothes … Unless what was hip had changed since we
terminated our joint socializing, I figured a tour of certain bars ought to turn
up someone who knew her. And if I found someone who knew her, then
maybe I’d get a pointer to the kidney man.
 The first couple of places didn’t work—an espresso bar on Harper
Avenue, where I was a little reckless with caffeine, and a live music joint
near Paramount where I did what I could to antidote myself with vodka.
Third time lucky, though. At a place on Detroit Street, not far from the drag.
The club didn’t make much of a fuss about its entrance, just a door
between two businesses, propped open with a chair, giving onto a flight of
steps that led below street-level. It wasn’t mentioned in the entertainment
listings, and it wasn’t at the cutting edge of any musical trend, but it
nevertheless had its attractions for a certain kind of person. Because, along
with an almost nonexistent policy against substance abuse, it had a gimmick
that was just so terribly wild, man—it was cool to jerk off there. Or jerk
someone else off. Or get jerked off. And you didn’t have to hide in a toilet
stall either.
At the bottom of the steps I got frisked for weapons, paid the twenty
dollar entrance fee, and pushed through a set of padded double doors.
Simultaneous high-volume sound and low-power lighting—so low, in fact,
it took a couple of seconds for my eyes to adjust. The music was pretty
much industrial and it made a jagged atmosphere that I figured was
designed to get people so tense they had to beat off for relief.
Small and dingy, everything black. The dance floor held about eight and
the top of the bar looked like it had been cut from the side of a Russian
freighter. The air stank of fish. I bought vodka and watched some girl in
latex pump spunk out of a guy, into a glass that already looked a quarter
full. Then I checked out the crowd. It was hard to make out faces, so I
concentrated on haircuts. I found two I recognized sitting together in one of
the booths that ran down a wall.
Jimmy and Steve were rock star wannabes who’d come over from
England a few years back only to find that California already had about a
million unemployed musicians of its own. They’d adapted pretty well,
though, and moved swiftly on to an area in which they excelled—taking
smack. Mid-twenties, leather head to toe, dyed-black hair.
Their faces went blank and guarded through a moment of image search
when I walked up. But after I said Karen’s name they remembered who I
was and let me sit down. The first thing they asked was if I had any gear. It
wasn’t a particularly safe assumption, but I took it to mean they didn’t
know about her yet. On the junk front I didn’t disappoint them. I’d scored a
quarter gram at the beginning of the evening for just such an ice-breaking
opportunity. Even in that place cooking up in public would have been a bit
much, so we had to duck our heads below the table and snort it through a
bill. After that we were friends, mates, buddies—longtime acquaintances
chewing the fat about this and that.
Half an hour later, when a chick in the next booth had finished screwing
herself with a bottle of Rolling Rock, I started in on the real business of the
evening.
“How long since you guys seen Karen, then?”
The smack had taken hold and their responses were pretty relaxed.
Steve looked as though he’d done a tad too much to continue active
communication, but Jimmy was functioning reasonably effectively.
“Dunno. When’d we last see her, Steve?”
Steve managed a shrug.
“I dunno. A while.”
“Yeah, be a while now. How is she?”
“I haven’t seen her for a month.”
“A month? You split up or something?”
“Not that I know. I thought she was on a job.”
“Long job.”
“Yeah, I’m getting worried. You haven’t seen her?”
“Nah. Hey, Steve, you know where Karen’s at?”
“Huh?”
“Karen. D’you know where she is?”
“Haven’t got a clue.”
Jimmy lifted his hands and let them fall.
“Sorry, pal.”
“She was going on about this plan she had. I don’t know if it’s got
anything to do with anything.”
“No offense, man, but she’s always fuckin’ on about one scam or
another. They’re bullshit. Never happen.”
“This was, like, about kidneys or something.”
Jimmy laughed and slapped the table.
“Oh, fuck, not the kidney thing! Man, she was hot for that one. No
offense, but she’s a mad cunt sometimes.”
 Jimmy’s reaction jerked Steve out of his stupor. He opened his eyes and
scratched his forearms.
“I know someone who did it.”
“What are you talking about, you dumb cunt? Go back to sleep.”
“Nah, you know him too. That geezer who used to score off us. What
was his name? The fuckwit with all the earrings.”
“Joey.”
“Yeah, Joey. That’s how he said he got his bar.”
“Bullshit.”
“He showed me his scar.”
“And that makes it gospel.”
“I’m only telling you what he said.”
“He was shitting you, for fucksake.”
Jimmy shook his head and got up to go watch a circle of guys who were
starting to group around a girl.
I asked Steve how much Joey was supposed to have been paid for his
kidney. When he said thirty grand it seemed smart to ask for the guy’s
address as well.
“I don’t know where he lives, but his bar’s on Pico. It’s got all this
bullshit Egyptian stuff on the front. Look for a little guy with a goatee. And
lotsa earrings.”

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Ten
Dead beat. Late night back at the apartment. Head still swaddled in smack.
The place looked worse than ever, dingy under light from a naked bulb.
Even the furniture was unpleasant to look at. One piece in particular,
because Ryan was sitting in it. Flabby body sagging into cracks between
cushions. Same black suit, a clean white shirt, hair slick and gleaming, flat
against his head.
“What the fuck—”
“Hiya, Jackie. Where you been? I was out in the car, but you took so
long I thought I’d come in and make myself at home.”
“What do you want?”
“Oh, touch base, look the place over … Where were you?”
“Out.”
“Put a bit more effort into it.”
“I was with friends.”
“So soon after Karen’s death? My, my. Got a drink?”
“What?”
“A drink. Liquor, booze, firewater.”
“It’s like three o’clock.”
“So we’ll have a three o’clock drink.”
Arguing obviously wasn’t going to make things any easier, so I got
Southern Comfort, ice, and glasses from the kitchenette, poured a couple of
drinks, and sat down on the bed, opposite him.
“Is this going to take long? I’m tired.”
Ryan ignored me and scanned the room.
“Not much to show for a life, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“You should have tried harder, Jackie, given her something better. I
would have.”
He drifted off then for a couple of seconds, like he was remembering
something. When he came back he wasn’t any better. He knocked back his
drink and screwed up his face like it was painful going down.
 “I heard they make this stuff from orange peel.”
He poured himself another and looked at me speculatively.
“Know what I used to think about when I was fucking her? I used to
think what it’d be like having her all the time, like you did.”
“It was less fun than you might imagine.”
“Yeah, she said your relationship wasn’t too hot. But that sort of thing
don’t mean shit after fifty. You get someone her age who ain’t hideous and
you’re ahead of the game. It makes it like you haven’t got old. Feels good
just walking down the street like that, believe me.”
“How interesting.”
Ryan moved surprisingly quickly for a fat man, lunged forward and
dragged me upright. His fingernails scratched my chest. The back of my
head hit a wall.
“Don’t ever think I don’t matter. I spent thirty years shoveling shit in
this town and at the end of next year I’ll get a pension for it that’ll rent a
two-room dump and buy a piece of secondrate ass once a month. Facing
that, Jackie, I won’t take attitude off some waster fuck like you.”
If we’d gone head to head I would have come out on top, easy. But he
was a cop and he had a gun. So I stood there and let him breathe heavily
into my face. A few seconds later he went back to the couch and sat down
abruptly, rubbing his chest.
“Get me some water.”
I brought him a glass. He took a few sips then put a pill under his
tongue. His face looked congested.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Pour me a drink.”
“You think that’s wise?”
“Yeah, it’s wise. Pour me a fucking drink.”
I splashed out Southern, trying to figure if his dying in the apartment
would be a good thing or a bad thing. Ryan held it up to the light.
“I gotta cut back on this shit.”
“You get the results from my sample yet?”
“Maybe …”
“Or maybe you never put it in to be checked.”
“Oooo, now what does that mean?”
 “I called your station. You’re not on the case. You don’t even work
homicide.”
“Jackie … That wasn’t very smart. That wasn’t very smart at all.”
“I didn’t say anything to them, but I mean, shit, you work porn or
something.”
“If you ever do anything like that again, I’ll kill you.”
“I want to know what the fuck’s going on.”
Ryan sucked in a breath and held it for a moment. He let it out slowly.
“So you can understand, so you can appreciate the potential for
something very bad happening to you, I’ll outline the situation. I knew
Karen, I already told you. I see some crime-scene photos on a desk and I
find out she’s dead and that no one can get a handle on who she is. I not
only know who she is, but I know plenty about her background. Probably
more than you, Jackie. I know she’s married ’cause she told me, and I know
where she lives because I followed her home one time after I’d fucked her.
Call it idle curiosity. I know other things too, but I’m not homicide, I’m
minor vice. So I got a choice. Let the murder guys have what I know and
hope they don’t fuck it up. Or go out on my own and make sure things get
done properly.”
“But why? So you knew her. Big deal. I don’t see the motivation.”
“Well that’s something you’ll have to puzzle over, ain’t it? And while
you’re puzzling, it’d be smart to remember that me not being hooked up
with the department on this one don’t have too many advantages for you. I
don’t have to worry about all those pesky regulations and codes of practice,
get my meaning?”
“I figured that when you made me wank in the car.”
“I needed a sample. Don’t worry, it didn’t go to waste. I might be
operating unofficially, but I got people who owe me favors.”
“Then you know it wasn’t my spunk in Karen. You check my alibi too?”
“Yeah, I spoke to the guy. You got lucky both times.”
“Then why are you still hassling me?”
“’Cause things are never as simple as they seem. Time of death can be
thrown off by a lot of things, maybe you kept her in the fridge a few days
before you dumped her. And your come? You could have had an
accomplice and it was his. Doesn’t stop you being involved. You know
something, Jackie, and I’m going to keep turning up and turning up till I
find out what it is.”
“This is insane. I could call your station right now and get you seriously
fucked up.”
“But you won’t. One, you’d have too much explaining to do—like why
you didn’t report her missing, like why you lied about her tattoo, like why
the whole thing seems to mean nothing to you. And two, because I’d kill
you. You think things are insane now? Wait till I really get pissed.”
He pushed himself to his feet, but he must have done it too fast because
he had to bend at the waist and take a few deep breaths. He straightened
after a while and blinked rapidly a couple of times.
“Fuck, I must be getting old. Got any coke?”
“I wouldn’t give you the steam off my shit.”
He laughed at that, then ran his hands over his hair and pushed his way
through the door.
Look out world, asshole reentering.
I slept and the night rolled over into day like a dog. Another postmeridian
awakening—sunshine on empty bottles, tangled clothes. I dozed while the
temperature rose.
Sometime around one Royston phoned and whined about his money. I
told him I had it and to come around tomorrow morning. He sounded
pleased and tried to act like we were buddies again. I hung up on him, then
dialed the number of a house clearance company.
Sucking cathode. Lucky people on the screen, going back to their trailers
after each take to be pampered, to rally the army of friends and associates
necessary for the movie-star night ahead. Or to hold conversations on their
cell phones that would shift large amounts of money and equipment around
the world, conversations that would affect the lives of other men.
I burned up an hour with longing. I dreamed I was one of them. But
after a while it got too painful.
To distract myself I bagged up Karen’s stuff and took it down to the
garbage drum at the back of the building. I heaved the bags over the steel
side and looked in after them. One of them had split and spilt its contents
across a previously dumped family of cats. The animals were rotting and
badly torn. I stood there watching maggots crawl over panties, cheap
cosmetics, Kotex … Then I got in the car and caught a movie at a multiplex
on Third Street.
The clearance team turned up at the end of the afternoon, some cowboy
outfit that worked off hours and didn’t ask questions as long as they made a
profit. I put the stuff I wanted to keep in the closet and told them to take
everything else. They offered me four hundred and seventy-five bucks, not
a huge sum for the contents of an apartment, but it didn’t seem too bad to
me, considering none of the stuff was mine.
I left them to it and killed what was left of the day in a bar on the
promenade. Around seven I used the card Rex had left me and made a call.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Eleven
Bel Air Escorts was a telephone service with the end of the line in a
Wilshire district apartment. Nice area—wide road with no loiterers, wide
balconies, plenty of glass. Hardly Bel Air, but clean and quiet and
anonymous—fine for a business that dealt in take-out sex.
My intercom buzz was answered immediately—they were expecting
me. Up fifteen floors in a mirrored elevator that smelled of pine
disinfectant. Deep-blue carpeting along the hall. No people, no sound.
Faceless and sanitized, like the passage-ways of a hotel. I pressed a white
button next to the door and waited.
A lean, bald guy in leather trousers and a black vest opened up. He had
the air of a favored slave, proud and dedicated, but kind of reined in. We
walked down a hall of closed doors to a room that had probably been a
bedroom but was now converted to an info-teched office. Minimalist decor
—gray slate floor, white walls, a big carbon fiber desk across one corner, a
spray of black twigs in a smoked-glass vase. The windows were opaque,
tinted slightly orange by streetlight from the road below.
There were two people in the room: a sleek Latin guy about forty
tapping away on a laptop behind the desk, and a girl with perfect blond hair
and an even better body sitting on a black leather couch placed midway
between two of the window panels. She wore a tight red lycra minidress
and held herself with confidence. Thousand bucks a night, for sure.
The Latin exited from his screen and slid his eyes over me.
“You know Rex?”
He had a rough voice, like his throat had been damaged in some
youthful Central American skirmish. And I didn’t like his eye contact either
—too direct, too long. No one asked me to sit down, so I stood in front of
the desk feeling uncomfortable.
“Er, yeah. Rex said he thought I’d be okay at this kind of work.”
“And what kind of work would that be?”
“The kind Rex does.”
“Be more precise.”
 “Well, hustling, I suppose. Going around to people’s places for sex.”
“Oh, no.” The Latin shook his head sadly. “Oh, no. That is not what
Rex does at all. Hustling—”
“Rex fucks people for money. He said I should get in touch with you.”
“Do not interrupt me. I am making a point. This is an operation with
class, there is no room for the hustling mentality. My clients pay a lot of
money and they expect something more than ten minutes in the back of a
car. I am not in the business of selling what can be found on any street
corner.”
“Okay.”
“Understand also that sex is sometimes only part of what you will be
paid for. Some clients wish to be accompanied to dinner or to a party first.
You must be discreet and pleasant, even if they are old or unattractive. Can
you do this?”
“I can do anything you want.”
He nodded to the girl on the couch. She stood up and moved close.
“Good. Indulge me.”
“How do you mean?”
“Grace.”
The girl took the hem of her dress and peeled it up over her head. She
was naked underneath, tanned without break from head to toe, pussy hair
shaved into a tight wedge.
“You’ve taken me a little bit by surprise. I’m, er, not exactly sure—”
“If you can’t do it here, how can I trust you to perform in the bedroom
of a rich woman whose looks are nowhere near as … perfected as Grace’s?”
This wasn’t the same as the night with Rex. This was cold and
demanding and hadn’t had time to grow into shape. And my blood was
relatively free of liquor and drugs. The potential for humiliation was high,
but I had no choice. I needed money. And more than that, I’d committed, up
at the Hollywood Bowl overlook, to a certain kind of life, and this was one
of the ways it was lived. If I backed away now I’d be forced to reevaluate
myself, and I had nowhere left to reevaluate to.
Grace came close, she smelled of something dark and expensive. She
smiled a small kind of smile that didn’t help much.
When she pulled my jeans down the air in the room felt unpleasantly
cool on my balls. I pressed against her, seeking heat. Hard back under my
hands, firm ass, breasts against my chest. If I could jerk off in front of Ryan,
I had to be able to do this.
I blanked out the Latin and the bald guy and pushed my face into her
hair. When I touched her she was wet. She made a small sound of pleasure.
It sounded so genuine, so wanting, that the primal fuck—urge overrode my
worrying brain and pumped my cock full of blood.
She put a condom on me with her mouth and we fucked standing up, me
behind and her bent forward, hands braced against the edge of the Latin’s
desk. He watched me carefully over her shoulders, but not like it was giving
him a kick.
When it was over the bald guy gave us both a small towel. Grace wiped
herself, pulled her dress back on and took her place on the couch. She didn’t
light a cigarette and she didn’t fix her makeup. She just sat there, letting her
eyes drift around the room.
“How fast do you recover?”
“You want me to do it again?”
The Latin smiled, slightly.
“I have a job for you. Tonight. A nice job. Big house, good money, not
too bad looking. Start you off easy.”
The clearance guys had done their work well, the apartment was gutted.
They’d left the phone and the light bulbs, but that was about all and I had a
momentary pang when I realized I’d forgotten to tell them to leave the TV
—a friend in the corner would have been nice while I got ready.
The Latin’s gig was a deep night number—dick on call to chill some
woman when she got home from a premiere or charity function or a Hills
party where absolutely everyone was there, darling. Or whatever. That
meant I had some hours to kill—time to take a stab at tracking Joey down. I
showered and changed, then started on bloodstream preparation.
I still had some of the three hundred I’d earned with Rex, plus the cash
from the contents of the apartment, and as it looked like I’d be getting more
tonight, I decided to blow a little of it down at the beach front.
I could have had coke, but I went for sulfate instead—bathtub
amphetamine. Quarter the price and a lot less fun, but it had its advantages.
Half a gram would wire you all night and make you horny as hell. It also
gave you a stressed-out edge that communicated itself to people, made it
harder for them to be certain of your reactions. Just right to fritz Joey if I
found him.
Back at the apartment—a couple of lines, two Southerns, and a Bud
took me close to the terminal velocity of mood necessary to make it out into
the city and do the things I’d set for myself. A minute of air punching to
limber up in case Joey got difficult. Almost there, almost there …
Something missing … Yes, a cigarette! Stick one in and fire it up. Check
eyes in the mirror—yep, pupils at maximum dilation, skin tight, jaws
clenching … Ready to energize.
Into the Prelude. Driving felt like fun, but all the other cars were going
so goddamn slow. I tailgated along Lincoln. Everything was crystal, like the
air had been sucked out of the spaces between things, like that awful,
beautiful clarity you get in pictures taken from the space shuttle.
Litany in my head; take it easy, take it easy, watch that car ahead, that
other guy’s making a right, tap brakes, indicate, smooth swoop around,
straighten up, take it easy, next guy ahead, pass the sucker, no competition,
nothing touches this Jap technology. Switch lanes, switch lanes again,
perfect highway positioning. At one with the car—a Zen state inside a
machine from a polluted Zen race.
Pico Boulevard, a tertiary road, narrow but pretty straight and not too busy.
Fine for dawdling along, looking for a place I’d never been. Four blocks
past chunky Santa Monica College, on the corner of Clover Field
Boulevard, I found Bar Ramses. Like Jimmy said, bullshit Egyptian—
plaster Pharaohs on either side of the door, floor to ceiling windows in the
shape of ankhs, hieroglyphics over everything.
I parked in the lot out back—not much light, plenty of trash—and did
another line. By the time I got out of the car I was grinding my teeth and the
booze in the bar had as much pull as the possibility of finding Joey.
Inside. Not what the flashy front suggested, just a neighborhood bar.
Booths, wall alcoves, a couple of pool tables in the rear, a scratched-up
open space where the clientele danced sometimes perhaps. A lot of tobacco
smoke and very little mineral water.
Scanning didn’t do any good, so I chilled at the bar with shots of vodka
until I’d had enough contact with the barman to feel comfortable asking
about Joey.
 It went easier than I’d thought it would—no movie-style shifty eyes or
sudden tightening of the mouth, no dive under the counter for a gun. Just:
“Joey? Yeah, he’s around. Try back there by the pool tables. Middle booth.”
Bit of a letdown, really. I’d been all set to faze him with something neat
about old buddies or wanting to pay back a loan.
Joey was sitting by himself. He had a bottle of beer and a contact mag
in front of him. Steve’s description was accurate, the edge of his left ear
was rimmed with nickel-sized silver hoops and the bottom of his face ended
in a triangle of dark hair. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and he was short and
scrawny, a lot smaller than me. Things looked good.
He jerked when I sat down opposite him.
“This is private, fuck off.”
“Hi, Joey. How ya doin’?” Big smile.
“Do I know you?”
“No, but we’re connected.”
“I don’t know you, but we’re connected? The fuck’s this, a game
show?”
“I want to ask you something.”
“I don’t do handouts. Fuck off.”
“Steve gave me your name.”
“Who?”
“English Steve, long black hair. Hangs out with Jimmy.”
“Never heard of him.”
“I don’t want to be indelicate about this, Joey, but you used to buy from
him. All I want is some information, it’s important to me.”
“I could give a fuck.”
Being reasonable obviously wasn’t going to get me very far. Time to
push a little harder and hope my balls held up.
“Could you give a fuck about telling the IRS how you financed this
place? Or the police maybe?”
“I could give a fuck about calling some friends over.”
Joey jutted his chin at a group of men playing pool.
“Remember the story you told Steve?”
“I told you, I don’t know Steve.”
“Don’t be a prick. I can freeze you with a word.”
“Yeah?”
 “Kidneys.”
Joey stepped his attitude down just a notch.
“What about kidneys?”
“Removal. Selling. Don’t act stupid, I haven’t done this sort of thing
before. I might flip out at any moment and get all amateur and violent. Tell
me how to connect and I’ll walk out of here. That’s the last you’ll hear of
it.”
“I can’t tell what I don’t know.”
Enough was enough. I leaned across the table, took hold of his
Hawaiian lapels, and pulled. The material made a nice ripping sound and
buttons flew out of the booth. I ran my hand down the skin of his chest,
down the left side of his guts, down to the scar that ridged his pasty white
skin.
“Hey, fuck off, man!”
He started to push himself upright, ready to make an unwelcome scene.
I didn’t have much choice, I hit him hard enough to make his mouth bleed.
Hitting someone was new to me, but it meshed perfectly with the way
things had been going since Karen’s death. I’d seen the situation a million
times on TV so I knew it was the right thing to do—I didn’t feel bad about
it at all. I guess I was growing as a person.
A quick glance at the bar, no one seemed to be paying much attention.
But Joey looked like he might be thinking about yelling, so I talked fast.
“This kidney thing connects to a murder, and if I don’t get what I want
you’re going to find yourself involved. I got one super-fuck cop on my ass
about it and he’d just love to get a taste of you. You want to lose your liquor
license? Man, it’d be gone the day he came to see you. Now sit down and
we’ll talk about that scar on your belly.”
The mention of cops took the wind out of Joey. He wiped blood off his
lips and dropped back into his seat.
“I don’t know nothing about a murder.”
“I asked about kidneys.”
“So I sold one of them. Big fucking deal. The bread was too good to
pass up.”
“More.”
“Like what?”
 “Like, Joey, where you went to do it, who did it, how I find them. That
sort of thing.”
“That’s going to be difficult.”
“You got a phone in here? Maybe we need someone who’s better at
asking questions.”
“Fuck, man, I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know any names or
places.”
“Tell me how it fucking went down, then.”
“Jesus, okay …” Joey raised his hands like he was placating an
aggressive retard. “Fuck … A while back I wasn’t setup like I am now. You
know the drag?”
“Yeah.”
“I used to hustle down there. I ain’t proud of it, but I didn’t have a place
to live, no family to go to, I was hungry most of the time—”
“I don’t give a shit if your dog just died. Get on with it.”
Joey looked vicious, then made me wait while he took a slug of beer
and sloshed it around his mouth.
“One night this Jaguar pulls up, I think the guy wants to trick and he
obviously has bread. But it don’t turn out like that, the guy says straight off
he ain’t interested in sex. He works for a rich doctor who gives free health
care to homeless people and he’s out looking for someone to take up the
offer.”
“What was the offer?”
“Go with the guy back to the doctor’s clinic, get a free checkup, some
immunization shots, pills if anything’s wrong. Plus a bed for the night and
two hundred bucks in the morning. I jumped at it. Two hundred was a lot of
money to me then. So I get in the car and after we’ve been going a while he
gives me this bag thing to put over my head so I can’t see where we’re
going. If I don’t do it the deal’s off ’cause the doctor wants to stay
anonymous. I figure what the fuck, a guy in a Jag ain’t a serial killer, right?
Anyhow, I do it and nothing happens and we get to where we’re going. He
don’t let me take the bag off till we’re inside so I don’t know where we
are.”
“How long did it take to get there?”
“’Bout a half hour.”
“What did it look like?”
 “Some kind of private place. No windows, not very big, bits of medical
stuff all over the place. He locked me in a room and a coupla minutes later
this woman comes in, but she’s got one of them doctor’s masks on, so I
don’t get a look at her face. She tells me she’s the doctor and takes some
blood and piss and asks me a bunch of shit—medical history, do I have any
living family, etcetera, etcetera. Then she makes me strip and gives me an
examination. I knew right then something weren’t straight. The way she
handled me—made me bend over, stuck her fingers up my ass, checked out
my balls. She was getting off on it, man. Anyhow, at the end of it she says I
don’t need any medication, but would I like a sedative to help me sleep. I
say, what have you got? She only lays some morphine on me. Can you
believe it? Then she says she has to think about the results of my
examination and leaves. Back comes the old guy and takes me to another
room with a bed in it. Again he locks the door and there’s no windows, no
way to get out. I figure, so what? Just bang the shit, wait till morning, and
collect my two hundred. If they’ve got some security hang-up, it ain’t my
problem. Next morning the doctor chick, still with her mask, tells me she’s
looked at my results and there’s a proposition. I can take the two hundred
like they promised and get a ride back to town, or I can donate one of my
kidneys and get thirty grand for it. Thirty fucking grand!”
“Donate it to who?”
“Who knows? Some rich bastard who needed one, I guess. She showed
me this operating theater they had there and gave me this spiel about how
you can live just the same with one as two. Everything was too real to be
weird, I mean they had all these machines and everything. So I said yes. It
happened the next day and I stayed about two weeks healing up—wasted on
morph the whole time. Then they let me go. With thirty grand in cash. And
get this, the night before the operation she came into my room and fucked
me. Kept her mask on like always, but she had some bod.”
“Could you identify her?”
“Not her face, anyhow.”
“What did the old guy look like?”
“Tall, thin. About fifty or sixty. Excellent hair, all silver, hadn’t lost a
strand. If you want to find him, look for that hair.”
“You ever see him again?”
 “No. I got this place, I don’t need to be doing with the drag anymore.
Hear about him, though.”
“From who?”
“Fuck, just hustlers. Sometimes a couple come in, they talk, I listen
when I can be bothered. I hear mention of a silver-haired guy in a Jag, gotta
be him.”
Joey leaned back and drank beer. He’d got his confidence back with the
telling of his story.
“You wanna give out with this murder business?”
“No.”
“I figured. What about the cop? I don’t want him around here fucking
up my life.”
“So long, Joey.”
I headed for the door. He shouted that I was a cocksucker and a few
heads turned, but nobody stood up.
I sat in the car and slow-breathed. My hands were shaking but I felt
pretty good about the way I’d carried things off. Playing strong-arm wasn’t
something I was used to and it had been a lot harder than it looked on TV
maintaining the necessary aggression.
I thought about doing a line, but I was wired to the gills already. The
adrenaline I’d pumped in the bar hadn’t combined well with the speed and I
felt nerved. In an hour I was supposed to be fucking some woman in
Beverly Hills, but if I didn’t chill a little I’d spurt as soon as I stuck it in her.
And if that happened I’d be fucked with the Latin and a potential source of
decent bread would vanish into the sunset. My head said I should eat, but
my guts weren’t into it. I smoked instead and mulled over what I’d learned.
Karen had sold her kidney. Joey had sold his. To the same buyer?
Obviously. Even in L.A. black-market organ acquisition couldn’t be that
widespread. But as far as Karen had let on she’d gone to Malibu for her
doctor fuck sessions. Joey hadn’t been in his guy’s car long enough to make
it there from the drag. A problem? Same people with two operating
theaters? Or did they move about as a precaution? Impossible to know.
Right now I’d have to go with Joey’s info. A silver-haired old guy in a
black Jag. Apparently still recruiting members for the kidney club among
the trash of the drag. Only one way to check it—hang out there and hope I
got lucky.
Pulling out of the parking lot, on the way to my gig in Beverly Hills, a
complication arose. My headlights caught a gray Plymouth across the street.
Lights off, engine dead, but there was a dark man-shape behind the wheel. I
looked close and saw a silhouette of slicked hair and heavy jowls paying
attention to me. Ryan. Had to be.
Rapid ignition. I got mobile and he wanted to follow, but I couldn’t
have him click to my sex deal—too much to add to his already skewed
imaginings.
He was pointed at Pico. He must have followed me and figured I’d go
back the way I came. I screamed right instead, figuring I could take Clover
Field straight to Santa Monica and lose him on the way, then be free to
motor on up to BH. He dropped seconds hauling a U-turn and I punched the
Prelude down a street of bungalows and over the Santa Monica Freeway. I
had a two-hundred-yard lead by the time he’d gotten himself straight.
I split right from Clover Field about a minute past the freeway. Twenty-
sixth Street. The lights phased my way as I crossed Olympic—talk about
ass. Ryan caught my turn, though, and on the straightway the big engine in
his Detroit cop car cut into my lead. No siren, no strobe, still out on his
own.
Shaking him by Santa Monica wasn’t going to happen. I went cold and
dry. I was eyes through a windshield, hands on a wheel, feet on pedals. I
knew if Ryan caught me his anger at my having dared to run from him
would express itself physically. But if I could lose him maybe there was a
chance we could both pretend I never knew he was there, that I was just out
testing my wheels. Slim, but better than nothing.
Past Colorado Avenue I was into a grid system. Evasive action. I cut
from the straight at ninety degrees. I did it again. And again. Ryan managed
to make it, I could see his predator headlights in my mirror, but he was later
each time, each time a little farther behind. Until, on the other side of
Wilshire, when I made the second of a series of turns, he hadn’t made the
first. I was out of his eye-line at last, but he could still make a lucky guess,
so I dog-legged it all the way over to San Vincente Boulevard. By the time I
reached it, things were fine. No more Ryan. Left cursing in residential
SaMo, hopefully.
Wind down. Pull over. Deep breaths, fingers through hair. My stomach
felt weird. Into a convenient McDonalds, then back to the car with a
chocolate shake and a carton of fries. Forcing down a burger was out of the
question.
I sat for a while wondering what the fuck to do. Ryan was snowballing
into something that would soon be impossible to shrug off. The semen
collection in the market parking lot and the hassle in my apartment had
been unpleasant and pervy. But actually being jacked enough to trail me
across town and sit outside a bar on the off-chance of witnessing something
useful raised things to a more worrying level.
And now I’d just outrun him in a car chase.
The only hope I had was to move fast enough to stay ahead of the game.
And pray that if the shit ever hit the fan I had the name of Karen’s killer to
save myself with.
I started up, nauseous from the shake and fizzing with decayed
adrenaline. I drove fast, but not fast enough to attract attention. The last
thing I wanted was to pick up a cruiser on my way to Beverly Hills and my
first solo performance. Especially as Ryan might catch the radio traffic.
The gig went okay. I got to the place half an hour late, but it didn’t seem to
matter. Big house, rose stucco, thirties style but fake. Set back from one of
the streets northwest of Sunset. She let me in herself, it was too late for the
servants. Sharp thin face, sharp thin body, she looked like a woman who
lived on cigarettes and pills. Dyed brunette, around forty, maybe a minor
tuck behind the ears. I wouldn’t choose her, but she didn’t disgust me either.
A drink downstairs and small talk neither of us could really be bothered
with, then up to the bedroom. Wild. Floor space for a couple of apartments,
a sunken bath in a glass-walled conservatory that looked out over a cleverly
lit and expensively maintained garden, a ceiling studded with small bulbs
that twinkled like stars.
She wasn’t interested in pretend love. We stripped off like wrestlers
getting ready to hurt each other. I expected a bell to ring.
She said she wanted to watch me piss in the bath before we got it on, so
I stood on one side of it and let rip. She sat with her feet over the edge and
caught the stream in her hands and splashed it over her tits and between her
legs. The bath was stoppered and when I finished she climbed in and rolled
around in what I’d left there.
 There was a dildo in the soap tray, she handed it up and got on all fours.
I stuck it into her, first her cunt, then her ass. I had a hard-on by then, but
the woman was off in some never-never land, moaning to herself, and I
wasn’t sure what she expected. I chose the obvious route and fucked her
from behind. She came, eventually—in fact, I beat her to it, but she was
paying so I kept pumping until she made it.
When I pulled out she lay on her back and licked her lips at me. I
wanted to get a shower, get paid, and get home, but she was into value for
money. She wanted me to puke on her.
It took a few goes with my finger down the back of my throat. I had to
stand over her, half bent, soft dick still wrapped in a condom full of come,
and every time I retched I almost lost my balance on the slippery surface of
the bath. I did it in the end, though, and by the time I finished, her tits and
chest were covered with heavy gouts of creamy brown shake and chewed-
up fries. She spent some time rubbing it over her belly and into the hair of
her cunt.
Twenty minutes later she was holding the front door open and handing
me money—the Latin’s forty percent would go direct to him via one of her
credit cards. I was dressed and freshly showered, but she was still naked
and caked with drying puke. It looked like she planned to sleep that way.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Twelve
Early A.M. Venice looked blurred and dissolute, already a place I’d left. At
least Ryan wasn’t waiting there for me. No gray Plymouth parked in the
shadows, no disinterred Bela lurking in a stairwell across the street. I went
up to do my packing.
The apartment was as empty as I’d left it, but the emptiness had taken
on a permanence now that a legion of future tenants would not dispel. At
least not in the picture of it I’d take with me.
I filled a couple of garbage bags with my stuff. There wasn’t much to
take—clothes, bathroom things, my tapes of 28 FPS, my gossip magazines,
the pill jar, the photo of the dead girl—but by the time I finished I was beat.
It had been a long day and there was still plenty to do. I sat on the greasy
carpet and smoked. When my body started aching too much to hold itself
upright, I lay down and closed my eyes and tried to ignore the hissing in my
head. At 7:50 the Casio on my wrist went off. Royston wasn’t due till 8:30,
but I wanted to leave plenty of margin.
I took the bags down to the car, then went back up for a last look
around. I stood motionless in the room and tried to suck one small
pleasurable past experience from its walls. All I got was stagnation and an
old, old life turned to dust.
I moved the car a little way down the street, but still in sight of my door,
and waited. It didn’t take long. He arrived at 8:15, pulled up in a shiny
black Cadillac, and bounded up the exterior steps like a dog expecting
dinner. His glasses caught the light and his mouth made stretched, spastic
shapes as he sucked air. I watched him knock on the door. No answer.
Obviously. He knocked again, then brought out his copy of the key and
disappeared inside.
Thirty seconds later he stepped quickly out and stood at the top of the
steps looking wildly around. He didn’t know I had the Prelude and so didn’t
spot me hunched down in my seat with a magazine covering most of my
face. He reentered the apartment. When he came out again it looked like he
was crying. He walked jerkily down the steps like he couldn’t see where he
was going.
I felt blood in a hot flush crawl up from my groin to somewhere behind
my eyes. It felt good, good, good. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to
stand on the roof of my car and beat my chest. But then he’d get my number
and be able to trace me. So I just pressed my thighs together and started the
car moving. Right outta Venice, toward Santa Monica.
Ripping off his furniture had been revenge for his meanness over the
rent, and though I knew it was a petty emotion it still felt eminently
satisfying. But its real value lay in that it was another defining landmark
along the road out of the mainstream, another irreversible step further away
from a pattern of living that had become obsolete. The old me would never
have done it. Ergo I was becoming someone new.
I drove with both windows down to feel the air. At Santa Monica I took
the ramp to PCH and kept going. I could have stayed on that road clear to
San Francisco and beyond. It crossed my mind. Just drive with the car
getting emptier and emptier of gas, and with each mile part of me
vaporizing and floating away too, until the car finally crunched to a stop on
some graveled coastal overlook and I was completely gone.
Blown away by the wind.
If only.
I drove through Malibu and same as always it wasn’t there. Low-level
housefronts on the ocean side of the highway, the occasional discreet road
winding into low hills on the other. You couldn’t see the beach, and what
you could see of the houses didn’t tell you much. But you knew that wealth
was close by, it was part of the legend.
Half an hour north I had breakfast in the diner of some shabby beach
town. Home fries, eggs, white toast, crisp bacon. I smoked over coffee and
watched the sea through the window. Blue with the morning sun. Local
surfers already out, sitting straddle-legged on angled boards, waiting for a
set. Easy, if you could just get up in the morning, tool down to the beach,
and hit the waves. Just do that every day and it be enough for you. A
blissful ignorance where the horror of not being as good as a movie star
didn’t exist. Where you didn’t know what you were missing, or if you did,
you didn’t care.
But I could never be like that, I wasn’t stupid enough.
I found a place in a thirties wreck on Emmet Terrace—north of Hollywood
Boulevard near the wax museum, east of Highland Avenue. The shell was
beautiful—a faded sandy deco, ten stories high. Once it must have been a
proud landmark, thrusting its chin out, Il Duce style, over the dream capital
of the world. A man with a place here in the thirties would have looked out
of his window through glass tinted gold with success and satisfaction. He
would have stood on the top floor, impeccably tailored, holding a crystal
tumbler of fine whiskey, the balmy air about him hazed lightly with Cuban
cigar smoke, and felt that there was no better place on earth to be than right
there, in Hollywood.
But that was a different world ago, and the shell was the only thing left.
The place had been chopped and divided, and divided again. A palace had
been turned into a collection of boxes stacked on a rise above a street of
cheap glitter.
Still, I wasn’t complaining. I was out of Venice and I had a roof over my
head in a part of town where sex and drugs ran close to the surface. One
room, kitchen, and bathroom. Bare wooden floor, a mattress in the corner, a
phone, a table, a chair, and, thank god, a TV. Sixth floor at the back, up in a
cage elevator you had to open yourself. I had a view of houses going ass
first into the hills.
It was around midday and I was broke. Rent and security deposit hadn’t
left me with much more than two days’ supply of coffee, cigarettes, and
beer. I pulled down the blind to shut out the sun and turned the TV on. But
there was a rip in the canvas and I had to position the set so the gash of light
it let through didn’t fall on the screen. I put it next to the mattress, then lay
there and ate my heart out at what I saw.
Rene Russo had bought a six-million-dollar mansion next door to Dean
Cain. Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were talking about a
two-hundred-million-dollar co-project. Tom Cruise was expected to net
twenty-six mil for Jerry Maguire.
Alcohol and nicotine. Drift off with the TV on, leave it on forever. If I
stay in front of it long enough maybe I’ll fall in.
The night before caught up with me and I slept.
A girl moaning on the next floor woke me around nine P.M.
 I phoned the Latin and gave him my new number. He didn’t have
anything for me, but said he’d be in touch. I tried Rex for company, but his
cell phone was off. There was no one else to call.
I turned on a light and killed the TV. Sat back on the bed and stared at it.
The dead gray screen looked like all the world shut off, like everything
everywhere all over the planet had stopped.
Panic. A feeling of being trapped forever in a room, in front of a blank
screen, while life rushed riotously past on the other side of the walls. I got a
beer out of the fridge in the kitchen.
Time to be doing something, time to get hold of some bucks. It was a
shame the Latin hadn’t been able to set me up, I would have liked to mark
my first night in Hollywood with a gig that involved a woman and a certain
amount of luxury. But, truthfully, being forced into street trade was
probably closer to what I wanted that night. Furtiveness, squalor, men—so
much more of a fuck-you to the mainstream.
So …
Out into the warm night, a few more beers under my belt and a cigarette
between my lips. The pink-lit concrete of the parking lot behind my
building had a dusty dryness that made it look like it might be comfortable
to lie on. Some nights all of L.A. looked like that—airbrushed, pastel-
tinted, something you wanted to run your hands over.
Scoot over Hollywood and Sunset, park within striking distance of the drag.
I was kid-perceiving as I wove through the hookers. Colors, smells, sound,
the damn light, and the air itself crashed against my senses with a keenness
unknown since childhood. I watched the customers jumping out of their
lives for half an hour, into this trough of flesh. True colors, baby. This is
what the world is. What it would be twenty-four hours a day if it hadn’t put
a collar on itself. I felt stoned, though I wasn’t, and in a stoned kind of
mind-babble I told myself that this slice of society had as much validity as
any other, that because of its greater honesty maybe it had more.
But I knew I was wrong, only one level of society had any validity at all
—the one at the top. I moved away from the flashy concentration of whores
and headed into butt-town, my mood getting rapidly more real.
Last time I’d chickened out, but that was a long time ago. That was
before Rex and the couple in the hills, before the Latin and the woman who
paid me to vomit on her, before Joey and his man in a black Jag.
It happened like clockwork. A Ford at the sidewalk, I was there as the
window went down. Cool, a guy smaller than me, an easy pummel if things
took a wrong turn. I got in. He spoke with a whine.
“Do you know a place? I don’t like to do it in the car.”
“Drive down an alley. Nobody cares around here.”
“I don’t like to do it in the car. I don’t like people watching.”
“Nobody’s going to watch.”
“They will. There’ll be ten people around the car jerking off before
we’re through. I know, it’s happened before. I’m not giving a free show. I
mean it. Don’t you know a place we can go?”
“Yeah, I know a place. Take a left here.”
“Oh, thank you. I didn’t mean to be difficult, it’s just that it has to be
how I want it.”
We took La Brea up to Sunset and across. Two streets back from
Hollywood Boulevard there was a row of old office buildings—low-rise,
six or seven stories of heavy, monoxided stone. The one on the end had its
ground floor boarded up, but a black iron fire escape jagged up the side to
the roof. Karen had brought me here once with a few of her friends—booze
and dope around a hidden fire of orange crates—simple pleasures and good
clean fun. Yes siree, out under the stars.
He parked his car carefully, made sure he’d set all the locks and the
alarm. On the steps he kept looking behind him, snapping glances into
shadows like he expected this to be a setup with my gang waiting to roll
him. Nervous. But I got the feeling the possibility of danger was all part of
it for him. What he wanted was something with an edge to it, something
stamped as unmistakably bad.
Welcome to the club, dude.
A small hut stood in the middle of the roof, an elevator housing or
something. The best place for what we were about to do—shielded from
view, a surface to lean against. It cast a shadow that swallowed us.
“Are you sure no one comes up here?”
“It’s safe. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay.” He nodded like he was giving final permission for things to go
ahead. “How much?”
 What could I say? I should have checked with Rex. Street trade was a
different scene than the Latin’s call service. A whole different scene. Karen
got thirty K for a kidney. How much for the use of my dick and a spoonful
of come?
“What do you want to do?”
He looked at me, building up the guts to ask.
“Blow job?”
I shrugged. “It’s up to you.”
“And you fuck me afterwards.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Okay.”
He dragged his money out and forked it over. I couldn’t figure from the
sound of his voice whether I’d asked for too much or too little.
Close, against the wall. He wanted to kiss, but I couldn’t cotton to that. I
pushed his face away and went for his fly. It felt weird touching another
man. I thought it would be the same as grabbing myself, but it wasn’t. The
squishiness you imagine a woman to feel when she holds your balls through
your trousers turns out to be much firmer, like a bag of sand. And his dick,
when I took it out, was like some machine-produced rubber sausage, not
organic or really part of him at all.
I got on my knees. He had a drop of clear slime hanging on the end of
his hard-on. I wiped it off with my palm and started sucking. He curled his
fingers into my hair and talked to me like a girl. Near the end he started
thrusting and his cock hit the back of my throat. I heaved but managed to
control it. When he came I spat it out, he didn’t seem offended.
On to the main attraction. Did he want to feel like a woman, or did he
want to be punished? Fuck it. Just skin up, stick it in, and do it. What did it
matter? The money was in my pocket.
We had gel, but even so it took him a couple of minutes to relax his ass
enough for me to get inside. And this too was different than I thought it
would be. No clinging reception like a pussy, more of a neutral sufferance,
as though his colon wasn’t really interested. I started off holding him above
the hips, but later I leaned over him, braced myself stiff-armed against the
wall. The brickwork was rough against my hands. He made noises like a
dog rooting through garbage.
 At my back the city stretched away in an enormous shallow dish of
neon and gridded sodium light, so large you had to turn your head to scan it.
In front of me, if I could have seen through the hut and two streets of other
buildings, was Hollywood Boulevard, and beyond that the hills. Wild to
think that in the middle of all that, out in the open air, I was boning some
guy in the ass for money. For a moment I felt like the hub of a city-wide
wheel, the center of it, pumping this faggot in front of me to keep it turning,
like an engine. Absurd, of course.
It finished and I guess we were both satisfied. He was quiet while he
fastened his pants and I was glad not to have to put up with chatter, not to
have to engage any further. I had my own thoughts.
What had it meant to me? Not much. I could already regard it
dispassionately. It was only a question of mechanics after all—rub
something until you get a reaction. I didn’t suddenly find I liked men, but
neither did I feel like I’d done something terrible. It was a kick, a spike of
adrenaline. And I’d been paid for it. It didn’t need to be anything more.
He wouldn’t take me back to the drag. All he wanted was to be gone.
Cool by me. I cabbed it back to the Prelude, but I didn’t feel like going
home right away, so I cruised the streets for a while. The drag was still
happening—plenty of action, plenty of money changing hands. A lot of
different cars trawled the sidewalk. But no black Jaguar driven by a silver-
haired man. Eventually I went back to Emmet Terrace and hit the sack. A
few hours before dawn I woke up and jerked off over the picture of
Crowbar Girl. Then I slept again.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Thirteen
A couple of days later I connected with Rex. Late afternoon. He was in a
bar on Melrose, sitting alone at a table by the window, waiting for a gig. His
Californian gloss was a little dull and he didn’t seem interested in talking.
We ordered some food and watched expensive cars move along the street.
“Hard night?”
He looked at me blankly, then grunted.
“Prothiaden.”
“Huh?”
“I’m in a trough.”
“I thought you were on Zoloft.”
“Doctor said I needed a change.”
“Is it working?”
“Too early to say. He’s hopeful.”
“And you?”
“I gave up hope for Lent.”
“You sure they got the dose right?”
“It’s all a fucking joke to you, isn’t it?”
“Hey, man, I was just—”
“Joking. Yeah. That’s what I mean. Shit goes right past you and doesn’t
stop.”
“Hey, I’ve got problems. I mean, I’ve got fucking giant problems.”
“But nothing gets past the surface.”
“Bullshit.”
“Jack, your biggest ambition is to get on the cover of a gossip
magazine.”
“So?”
Rex must have realized how he was sounding because he dropped his
head and stared at his plate for a moment. When he spoke again I knew he
was trying to repair the damage, but it looked like an effort for him.
“Getting much from the service? He said he took you on.”
“One a few days ago, another tonight.”
 “Mmm. Money.” Rex nodded, but his gaze was wandering.
“Not enough. I’m doing the drag as well.”
“Don’t let him find out.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“It’s a dumb move.”
“So it’s dumb, what the fuck? I moved out of Venice.”
“About time. That place is a slum.”
“Venice is hardly a slum.”
“It’s shabby.”
“I’m in Hollywood now.”
“Actual Hollywood?”
“You bet.”
Rex screwed up his face. “And that’s not like a giant leap into shabby?
All those beggars …”
“Well, yeah, I know—”
“It’s so depressing.”
“Please, I can only stand so much encouragement.”
“Encouragement? Sorry, we’re all out.”
“Okay. Let’s move on. I wanted to ask you about the drag.”
“What about it?”
“Well, like, should I know anything about working there?”
Rex snorted. “You mean apart from it being super-dumb? Nope. Can’t
help you. What you want to know you can only learn by doing. Figuring
who the whackos are, who might be dangerous, who wants something you
don’t want to give. How to get out of situations without getting stomped …
You have to kind of absorb it, and if you’re not quick enough you’ll get
fucked over for sure. The only thing I can tell you is don’t carry ID.”
“How come?”
“If you get picked up it means more work for the cops. Some nights
they can’t be bothered and you walk.”
His mobile rang then—the Latin with his gig. Before he left I gave him
my new number and address. He put it in his wallet without looking at it.
Later that night I made three hundred dollars for fucking a woman while
her husband and twelve-year-old daughter watched.
In Hollywood the weeks rolled by. Days blurred into each other. I woke
late, watched late-night Hollywood news and gossip on a VCR I’d bought,
then soaps and movies—anything that showed a different world. I’d go out
to eat, and spend most of the night on the drag. I had no plans to do
anything with myself, no formula for self-improvement. I saw what I
wanted on TV and I knew I couldn’t have it. Everything else was futile.
Work from the Latin was sporadic, maybe once every ten days. I was
the new boy and the last in line when the gigs came in. On the drag I got to
know a few of the hookers, they spoke to me when I walked by and I drank
coffee with them sometimes. The rent boys were colder. They thought my
age put the clients off. Toleration was about as far as it went. I didn’t give
two fucks, I wasn’t there to make friends. The only things I was interested
in were money and that intensity of feeling you got when you slid into a car
with a guy you’d never seen before and you didn’t know what was going to
happen next. You knew it would involve sex, but you were never quite sure
how things were going to pan out.
My schoolboy fantasy of tracking Karen’s killer, a motivation which
had ridden alongside the need for cash and kicks in bringing me to the drag,
faded further into the background with each of these passenger-seat escapes
from boredom. I kept an eye out for the man in the Jag, occasionally I asked
about him, but I would have been down there selling my ass even if he’d
never existed.
Not long into this time, Ryan looped back in, bristling and gnashing his
teeth through an angry trajectory from Santa Monica to Hollywood.
Early evening. The drag hadn’t started to swing. The hookers were out,
but most of them weren’t bothering much. They just stood around and
smoked and talked, staking out their piece of sidewalk for later that night.
I’d been down an hour or so, most of it in a porn theater. The movies
were about as heavy as you could find outside the private video circuit—
douching, shitting, fisting—but they didn’t turn me on. Everything moved
around too much and took too long. I watched them because they made me
feel less alone—they were pictures of other people escaping the world.
Out on the street, heading for a burger at a place that had stools bolted
to the sidewalk outside a slit in its front. No gig from the Latin, so fagsville
looked like the evening’s entertainment.
Wrong.
 A white hand on my shoulder, long tapered fingers that were pudgy but
shouldn’t have been, carefully filed nails. It was that man again. The world
moved in jump cuts as I turned to face him, kind of a life-before-your-eyes
thing.
“Not smart, checking out of Venice like that, Jackie. You think I
wouldn’t find you?”
I bit down on the impulse to run.
“Gee, was I supposed to call the station first?”
“I’m still pissed about the car chase. Don’t make things worse.”
“Oh, shit, was that you? I thought it was someone trying to rip me off.”
“Don’t push it, Jackie. Where are you living?”
“Over on Emmett.”
“Gosh, I’d like to check out the fittings.”
We sat at the table like cowboys in a poker game. A bottle of Southern
Comfort between us, a six-pack of Bud, ice in a bowl—the guts of my
refrigerator. Ryan had his jacket off, his shirt was wet down the back and
under the arms.
He swallowed a shot of Southern, popped one of his nitro pills, and
opened a beer. He looked set to be around for a while.
“So, Jackie, how’s it going?”
“Okay.”
“Okay? That’s good. How you paying for this place? I checked with the
doughnut guy, he said you never went back.”
“This and that.”
Ryan looked like he was trying to kill a smile.
“What are you telling me? You working the drag? Shit, I thought you
were just hanging out. You get stranger by the minute.”
“What strange?”
“Your wife gets dead. A few weeks later you’re living in scum city,
taking it up the ass to pay bills? What is it, some kinda head trauma thing?
You feel so guilty you’re trying to be Karen?”
“What do you want, Ryan? You found out where I live. You obviously
don’t have anything else on the killing or you would have busted me on the
street. This chewing the fat thing is bullshit.”
“Wow, Jackie, talk about hurt my feelings.”
 He dug a bottle of Dexedrine out of his pocket and shook a few into the
palm of his hand—flat yellow tablets that look like 5mg Valium. Opposite
effect, of course.
“Here.”
“I want to sleep sometime tonight.”
“You can sleep when you’re dead.” He did two. “Might as well, Jackie.
I got something to do tonight and it’d be just dandy if you came along.”
“What is it?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll find it interesting, I guarantee.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Oh, Jackie, don’t say that.” He shook the pills at me. “Come on, I don’t
want you going all droopy on me.”
I sighed and took three. Ryan wasn’t a guy who took no for an answer
and the faster whatever he had planned was over, the better I’d like it. I
could always dose myself later with any number of downers.
“Thatta boy, Jackie. You and me together, drinking booze, taking pills,
kinda pally, don’t you think?”
“Whatever you say.”
One A.M. Breeze through the windows, warm and dry and powdered with
carbon. Both of us liquored and zipped on speed. Ryan drove one-handed.
Two types of cars on the streets—heaps driven by the young and the poor,
out looking for some kind of kick; expensive coupes and limos carrying
rich people looking for the same thing. The expensive cars looked exciting,
like you wanted to follow them and see where they ended up, meet the
people they were going to meet. The dented, primer-painted sedans just
made the road look ugly.
I looked for palm trees. They were there, everywhere, quint-essential
against the mauve sky. We headed east, cut the Hollywood Freeway on
Santa Monica Boulevard, and plunged into zero land. East of the freeway
and south of Griffith park L.A. turns into a million square miles of shit.
Unless you’re a Dodgers fan heading for Chavez Ravine. I never liked
sports.
Around Silverlake Ryan banged through a maze of side streets until he
found some kind of industrial estate—a compound of single-story, breeze-
block warehouses with corrugated iron roofs, ringed with a wire mesh fence
that was rusted through in places. The estate was unlit and the driveways of
cracked concrete that separated the warehouses turned into black tunnels a
few yards from the light of the street.
Ryan drove like he knew where he was going, along one edge of the
compound to a gate that was pretty much like the rest of the fence. A high-
beam flash brought a heavy-looking guy out of the dark. He looked closely
at Ryan, grunted unpleasantly, and opened the gate.
We rolled quietly through shadow, past oil-stained loading docks and
sinister dead-body piles of broken packing crates.
The Plymouth slid into a space beside a row of other cars. Scratches of
light cut a closed side-door into a building. In we went, Ryan and me, into
sudden light and people. Secondhand furniture storage an obvious function
—sofas, couches, upholstered armchairs ranked and racked, back to the
walls and up to the ceiling. Cheap velvets, fake leather, stained material—
used-up things to sit on that other people’s asses could no longer afford.
A square space had been cleared in the center of all this, twenty by
twenty perhaps. Around it, most of them standing, about fifty men waited
for something. Low talk shivered between them. They smoked and drank
beer out of cans.
A man watched by another man with a pump shotgun was taking money
and checking faces at the door. When he saw Ryan his eyes hardened but he
didn’t say anything, just nodded and handed over a wad of folded bills he’d
had ready in the pocket of his sport coat. Ryan winked at him, slipped the
money into his jacket like he’d done this more than once, and led me along
a short aisle of sofas to where everyone was gathered.
At one corner of the open space there was a stack of twelve-packs that
looked to be complimentary refreshment. Ryan grabbed a couple of cans
and handed one to me. It wasn’t cold, but at least it was Bud. I chugged it
down. The scene around me was combining with the usual Dex anxiety to
make me feel somewhat edgy. I couldn’t figure the atmosphere. There was a
lot of macho ball-swinging going on, but underlying this there was a current
of tension that seemed out of place at a gathering of beer-drinking buddies.
A jackhammer lay against a couch. Its black air hose snaked out of
sight, and somewhere back in the furniture jungle a compressor thudded.
“What’s this? A bare-knuckle fight?”
“Relax, Jackie, all you gotta do is watch.”
 I looked at the men around me, trying to guess what they were here for.
What I saw didn’t make me feel much better. Their faces were slabbed and
scoured by whatever winds blew when pity was relinquished. Frozen
mouths and flat eyes that wouldn’t change expression whether they watched
young children playing or someone in an alley getting the shit kicked out of
them. Motherfuckers who took pride in being motherfuckers. And keeping
an eye on these motherfuckers, no doubt thoughtfully provided by the
event’s organizers, were a handful of armed men standing around in
conspicuous positions.
“I don’t like this. I want to go.”
“You know what it costs to get into this place? A grand, minimum. I’m
doing you a favor, boy, don’t turn pussy.”
Two minutes later one of the gun guys walked across the square and
disappeared into the furniture. Everyone got quiet. Seconds ticked and some
of the hard men did little nervous things like running fingers through hair or
pulling shirts away from chests.
Then the guy came back, his hand clamped firmly around the wrist of
an anxiously giggling girl. She was about twenty-three and she wore a short
skirt and a blue Coca-Cola T-shirt. A large bare-chested man whose face
was hidden under an executioner’s hood followed them.
I figured some sort of spectator sex gig and relaxed.
The guy in the mask was built like a bull, very little definition but
plenty of muscle bulk. He stood in the middle of the square like a rock, the
girl looked at the floor and swayed from one foot to the other. She was
obviously stoned, but not smack—she was too up for that. After the gun
guy left the ring, Bullman grunted and the girl got to work—dragged off the
track pants he was wearing and sucked his dick until it was hard. Huge, of
course, thick as a woman’s wrist.
The routine went on from there—fingering, fucking, sucking in a
sequence of positions. At the end of it, Bullman pulled his pipe out of her
and pointed at the floor. I guess it was a signal, but she just looked unhappy
and didn’t move. Bullman hit her on the side of the head. She started to say
something and he hit her again. A few men in the crowd made turned-on
noises. The girl whimpered then bent her legs like she was getting ready to
sit on a chair. A second or two later, piss drew a yellow line from her cunt
to the floor, spattering off the concrete and wetting her ankles. A dark pool
spread underneath her. When she’d finished she squatted lower and I saw
her face turn red. A couple of small farts, then a shiny bone of shit squeezed
its way out of her hole and fell heavy and dead into the piss. I could smell it
from where I was standing.
“Totally interesting. Can we go now?”
Ryan seemed fixated. He didn’t look at me when he spoke.
“She’s somebody’s daughter, can you believe it?”
“Huh?”
“Just watch the fucking show.”
Out on the square they’d handcuffed the girl to a ring-bolt set into the
floor. She was on her back with her arms stretched behind her head, yelling
stuff about this not being part of the deal. Two men held her legs—one
each, straight up and pulled back. Bullman had a can of lighter fluid and a
lighter. It wasn’t a joke. He went all the way with it, squirted it over her
cunt and set it on fire. The noises she made didn’t sound human. The men
around me yelled like they were at a football game. Bullman didn’t let it go
on too long, though. When all her hair was gone he put the fire out with his
foot.
The air in the warehouse was bad—piss, shit, burnt cunt hair, burnt cunt
flesh. One of the men holding her legs had a bloody nose from where he’d
lost his grip for a second when she started to writhe.
“This is sick.”
“That may be, Jackie, but this kinda thing happens every day in every
country on the planet. It can happen to anyone you know. A few wrong
turns is all it takes. Think of it as an eye-opener.”
I was going to hassle more about leaving, but Bullman was lugging the
jackhammer across the floor and I had a feeling there wouldn’t be much
chance of getting out of there for a little while yet.
The girl sobbed and begged, but it didn’t make any difference to
Bullman. He rested the jackhammer’s chisel on the floor between her legs
and gave it a short blast. The clatter was deafening, small chunks of
concrete leapt into the air and the girl’s ass discharged a yellow-brown
liquid.
When Bullman released the trigger, silence fell heavily. This was what
the men had paid for, and they were waiting to collect—mouth-breathing,
blink rate way down, a whole separate reality.
 The girl babbled, promising everyone anything, but it wasn’t going to
help her. Everyone there knew it. And so did she.
Bullman stood with his dick sticking straight out and waited for her to
quiet. When she was down to a weak sniffling he hefted the jackhammer,
motioned to the two men to pull her legs further apart, and slid it a long way
into her cunt.
And pulled the trigger.
The tool tore into her, blood misted about its pistoning steel. Bullman
guided it so the point forced its way through her back—I heard a metallic
rasp as it hit concrete. Then he pulled free and sent it in at a different angle,
this time it came out the side of her hip. Blood sprayed through the holes. It
dripped off the barrel of the jackhammer and off Bullman’s forearms. The
girl puked over her chin and her eyes rolled back.
Bullman went for her mouth next. Teeth snapped as he put it in.
When the roar started again her head came apart.
Rolling west through the sodium wash. Quiet time. A space between the
esurience of night and the yawning kick-start of another morning. Few cars,
dry roads. Mild air whispering of optimism and possibility. I’d watched a
girl torn to pieces, but the city hadn’t changed. The money-bathed totem
remained in tact despite the furniture warehouse.
And how did I feel? Pretty much like the city. Things happened, other
things went on regardless. The girl was dead, but she would have died
whether I was there or not. One more pawn out of the game. Shitty for her,
but what real difference did it make to me?
I drove. Ryan sat in the passenger seat drinking heavily from a bottle of
bourbon he’d picked up at a liquor store a few streets from the warehouse.
By the time we turned off the Hollywood Freeway he was pretty far gone.
“So, you like that, Jackie?”
“Why did you take me there?”
“Wanted to show you that what happens to people is real. You think it’s
a joke, but it’s not. It matters … It matters to someone.”
Ryan shook his head slowly and stared at his knees. I had the horrifying
feeling he was close to tears.
“Stupid dumb bitch. Why did she do it?”
“Didn’t look like she had much of a choice.”
 “Just grow up and piss it away … Life ain’t perfect, but she didn’t have
to do that.”
A little while later he slumped forward against his seat belt and
muttered things I couldn’t hear. Then he started to heave. I swerved to the
curb but it was too late. He vomited into his lap and passed out.
If he’d been lying down maybe I could have dumped the car somewhere
and hoped he’d choke to death on his own puke. But he was upright and
breathing, and like that there was no way the fucker was going to sign off
and make my life any easier. So I checked him into a motel on the strip,
paid for it with money out of his wallet, and took a cab back to Emmet
Terrace.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Fourteen
The Latin called midmorning. He had a gay escort job set for that night.
Unusual, as most of the agency gigs were hetero, but what the fuck? It was
money, and if it was coming through the Latin it had to be reasonably high-
class. And high-class in L.A. meant movie people—real people.
I went out and rented a tux. From then until show time I sucked up news
—taped late-night gossip and midday broadcast info on current productions.
Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Douglas, Roberts, Stone, Willis, Moore … And
on down the ranks. Bit players, rising stars, falling stars, flavor of the
month, TV and big screen, the grossers, the flops, bankable, sexy,
crumbling, fighting … But all of them in there, in that glass-sided
swimming pool that magnified even the least famous of them into envy
objects for the rest of the world. The quality of their movies wasn’t
important, all that mattered was being on the screen.
I read glossy housewife magazines. I did the quizzes—multiple-choice
star facts, current and past film titles made into crosswords, guess the star,
which movie? Has Liz Taylor had a hysterectomy? Who’s dating who? I
knew ’em all—scored one hundred percent while I preempted small-screen
airhead reporters who thought they knew it all. I was better than them, I
knew more, and I looked good. But they were the ones with lives.
I did a little coke and had a shower. Out of it, dried off but still naked, I
walked around the apartment. Smooth night air sliding across my skin,
colors in the sky outside. A hole in time, one of those pauses where the day
stops and you float, free of the usual trivial bullshit. Ticktock. Pottering
about, touching walls and chairs, straightening my few possessions. No
thought, just movement. Just peace.
I dressed in the rental and did my hair. Most of the time it didn’t matter
as long as you were clean, but with an escort gig you had to take a little
more care. Besides, who knew what could happen mixing with the rich?
That thought, though, made me nervous. I hoovered more lines and
followed them with Valium. A fine combination. A pick-me-up and a take-
me-down colliding in a supernova of insular confidence. Yum.
The guy blew his horn about ten o’clock and I walked out of my building to
taste another world.
Merc 500 SL with the top down. Latest model, of course. Shiny and red
and showroom neat. He said his name was Dean. Gym-hours across his
chest and shoulders, good skin, good hair. He spent a lot of time on himself
and a lot of money on his clothes. But none of it looked like it ran too deep,
you could almost smell that he’d put everything into front, into his car and
the way he came across.
He leaned back and looked at me as I got in.
“Oh, you’ll do just fine.”
We breezed away from the curb and took boulevards into Beverly Hills.
The night looked polished—chrome, taillights, buffed metallic paint jobs,
pastel neon. Silhouettes of palms razor-cut into a warm velvet sky.
“I’ve seen you somewhere, right?”
Dean smiled. He was pleased. He had good teeth.
“Come on, now. I’m paying, you don’t have to do that. You don’t have
to impress.”
“Er, yeah … But I have seen you, haven’t I?”
“Not often enough, baby.”
“You’re doing okay.”
I ran my hand along the top of the door.
“This old thing? Six weeks work last fall. Remember Farrah Fawcett?”
“Wow.”
“What do you drive?”
“Prelude.”
“What’s that?”
“Japanese.”
“Like a Lexus?”
“Not really. It’s a Honda.”
“Oh.”
“It must be great being an actor.”
“It’s the best thing in the world. I mean, I haven’t totally made it yet,
but it’s a very nice thing to have people recognize you.”
“And the money.”
 “Money just buys things, Jack. It’s only a way of measuring what
you’ve got. It’s how your life is that’s important. Love’s important.”
“Love?”
“Being loved. That’s what we are, all of us in Hollywood, working like
whores. We’re the love generation. Love, love, love. Gotta have it! It’s what
we feed on.”
“I can dig it.”
“I imagine you can.”
Dean let out a whoop and gunned the car. Reflected light slid like oil on
water across the smooth paintwork of the hood.
“I want you to love me tonight, Jack. Really love me, like I was
everything to you. Every single thing in the universe. Can you do that?”
“I guess. I’ve done a telehosting course. That’s kinda like acting. Isn’t
it?”
He slapped my thigh gently a couple of times.
“Good for you. Good for you.”
We turned into Beverly Drive and started to climb into cooler air and
greater wealth.
The higher you go in the hills, the smaller the streets become, like
you’re moving away from the thudding central core of some beast toward
its skin. Artery, vein, capillary, tighter and more twisted. Until you get high
enough and super-money takes over from the double-digit millionaires
below. The houses move back from the road, too far to see, and the
crowding ostentation of the flats is filtered through acres of lawn and
woodland and becomes, to a poor ass-selling boy, something beyond
dreams.
The drugs I’d taken at the apartment seemed suddenly insufficient. I
would shortly be in a world where everything was better than me, from the
people themselves down to the fittings in their bathrooms.
We turned off the road and drove up a stretch of private asphalt to a set
of white iron gates. A man in a three-piece suit nodded pleasantly at us and
checked Dean’s invite against a list he had on a clipboard. As he did so, he
and Dean exchanged brief but pertinent comments on current affairs. Then
the suit spoke into a wrist mic and the gates opened.
And we rolled on into paradise.
 From the drive the grounds sloped down to the edge of a canyon in a
series of terraces. In between green open spaces there were two pools, an
ornamental garden, an orchard, a set of tennis courts, scattered service
buildings, and a number of follies—everything glowing soft gold.
Overlooking this, a white Spanish mansion, built in a horseshoe, went up
three stories in steps, like the land. Flowers had been braided into ironwork
balconies and laced around the outside of every window.
The inside of the horseshoe was filled with coral-pink gravel around a
fountain of some ethnic ceramic glazed sea-blue. When we got out of the
car it was driven away by a guy in crimson livery.
I can’t say I’d never seen a place like it before, because they were on
TV all the time, often in made-for-TV movies and nearly always in
miniseries. But it was wild really being there. Dean and I entered hand in
hand.
Space. Endless stone floors. A central reception that rose the full height
of the building and held another fountain. Arches in ranks, one after
another, off to other parts of the house. The ceilings were vaulted, like some
European monastery.
I stopped and looked around, drinking it in while Dean rubbed the back
of my neck. I imagined how it would feel if I lived there—in the morning,
getting up and strolling through quiet Spanish expanses, warm air and silk
against my skin—in the evening, freshly showered, dressing in perfect
clothes, smoking a single cigarette on the balcony of my suite, the sound of
a beautiful woman swimming in the pool below me rising into the night,
mixing with the scent of honeysuckle.
“Things, Jack, only things.”
“Yeah, but it must make being loved a lot easier, owning a place like
this.”
“That’s true. Indubitably. How much do you love me, Jack?”
“Lots?”
“No, Jack, properly.”
I stepped close to him, put my hands on his waist and kissed him.
“I love you like anything.”
“Will you love me forever?”
“Forever and ever.”
“You, my handsome stud, are on your way to a bonus.”
 We followed a wide corridor down one arm of the horse-shoe to a series
of interconnecting rooms that looked to be party central. A long way ahead
of us the end wall was folded back in a concertina of French windows and
the house gave out onto a broad spread of sandstone flagging and a pool the
size of a battle ship, burning turquoise with underwater lights. Somewhere a
quintet played West Coast jazz.
There were a lot of people there, but the place didn’t have the usual
frenetic party wildness. It didn’t seethe. Instead there was a smoothness to
the motion in the rooms, people glided from one flesh cluster to another,
their limbs lagging and subtly slowed. I thought at first it was an affected
grace, some learned mannerism of the upper class. What I realized later was
that wealth and success actually gave these people greater control over
themselves, it just happened to show in the way they moved.
Waiters were circulating, but there were a couple of bars too. The one
we used was made out of white marble. It looked like it had been imported
whole from some turn-of-the-century Italian salon. Spring water for Dean, a
vodka, Southern Comfort, and champagne cocktail for me. In a tumbler. I
really wanted to find a little seclusion and armor myself with a chunk of the
gram I was carrying, but if I couldn’t have one drug, I’d have another.
I leaned against the cool stone and scanned the crowd. There were
celebrities there, standing in scrums of hangers-on, but a lot of the people I
didn’t recognize. I figured the bash was mostly a production-side affair—
money men, producers, studio people, the lower profile directors, and so on.
Still, I felt like I’d walked into the pages of a particularly glossy magazine
and, god, I wanted to belong. I didn’t want to be just watching these people,
to be on the outside looking at them. I wanted to be them. I wanted their
limos and their palaces and their lack of worry about money to be part of
me. I wanted to wear clothes that could buy a car, that I could throw away
after a season. I wanted to walk into a restaurant and have people know who
I was. For a moment the desire for it all possessed me so intensely I thought
I was going to faint.
Snap back. Slug my drink. Order another.
“Whose place is it?”
“A guy.”
“It’s a secret?”
“Do you know much about the movies?”
 “I know everything.”
“Really?”
“Well, everything about some things.”
“You know Peter Laratin?”
“No.”
“Big producer, TV movies. Lots of work.”
“Oh.”
“He needs a gay guy to play a straight guy playing a gay guy. It’s a
sitcom. He thinks it’ll be more realistic.”
“So you’re working tonight.”
“Not me. I’m playing.”
“Listen, Dean, I gotta take a piss. I won’t be long.”
“Back that way, up on the second floor.”
I swallowed the rest of my drink and went exploring. Out to the central
reception, through discreet clouds of thousand-dollar perfume. Women
everywhere, all of them beautiful. I ran fantasy scenes. Would I fuck this
one, or that one, or her, or her? Indubitably. If they weren’t rich themselves
they’d be connected to someone who was. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, all
trimmed down and monied up. Any one of them could take my life up a
considerable number of notches.
The washroom off the second floor gallery had urinals, black tiles, and
tinted mirrors. I did my coke in one of the three stalls and sat there a while
licking my gums and letting it take hold. On the other side of the door men
came and went. Their conversation over the splashing of piss was about
imported cars, high-yield investments, films, and women. They told jokes I
didn’t understand.
On the way back to work I passed a woman standing at the balustrade of
the gallery. She was alone, looking down at the people grouped around the
indoor fountain. She turned as I moved by and it was there that it all started.
In the Godfather they called it the thunderbolt. Tick tick tick. A series of
freeze-frames, our eyes tracking each other, locking. Connections
completing, switches being thrown. It was all the lead-up, all the courting,
all the emotional feeling-out we were ever going to need or have. She had
gray eyes and black hair and white skin and she wore a fitted gun-metal
two-piece. She was older than me and she wasn’t immediately beautiful, but
her body was excellent and she was obviously major money. I went down
the stairs and she didn’t take her eyes off me. I looked over my shoulder
and her lips parted, but then someone got in the way and I was out of the
foyer.
Back at the bar Dean was talking to a middle-aged bald guy with
rimless specs. He was dressed casually in fawn slacks and a soft wool shirt
and he was super self-possessed.
“Jack, I’d like you to meet Peter.”
“Peter Laratin?”
The man shook my hand and smiled. “The one and only.”
“Wow.”
Peter moved closer to me.
“We have been talking, Dean and I. Can you guess what about?”
“Er …”
“We’ve been talking about love. About how much in it you are with
him.”
I glanced at Dean. He was looking at me lovingly.
“Oh, I love him like anything.”
“And he feels the same. Can you tell me what love means to you? How
you … view it?”
“Well, I don’t know …”
“I’ll tell you what it means to me. I see it as a hunger. I see it as a big
bloody roast on which to gorge myself. Thing is, you can never get enough,
you can never get full. And it lasts such a short time. Especially Chinese
love, eh?”
He chuckled at this.
“Chinese love?”
But he wasn’t listening. He’d put his hands out, one on my shoulder,
one on Dean’s, like a favorite uncle.
“You know, Dean, I’d very much like us, all three of us, to talk this over
some more. You and Jack are such a rare example, I’m sure I could learn
from you.”
“Oh, I could talk about Jack for hours.”
So we left all the swinging Hollywood hipsters, all the millionaires and
movie stars, and walked back in the direction of the toilets I’d been to
earlier. From the gallery, on the way, I thought I saw the woman in the gun-
metal two-piece again, standing in a corner on the ground floor. But I
couldn’t be sure it was her.
The room Laratin took us to had no windows. There was a large bed in
the center covered with a cream rubber sheet and the walls were hung, floor
to ceiling with black-and-white enlargements of assholes. Not soft-focus
Playboy-style rear-end shots, but close-ups of pitilessly exposed anuses—
hair, abrasions, crusted shit, and all. There was a camera on a tripod in front
of the bed.
“Now I do want to talk, Jack, but I wonder if you’d do me a little favor
first?”
Laratin was fiddling with the camera and I could hear the high-pitched
hiss of the flash charging.
“Just lower your trousers, will you, and bend over, there at the end of
the bed? I like to keep a record of all my new friends.”
I dropped my pants and braced my hands against my knees.
“No, no, no, that isn’t right. It isn’t open enough.”
I reached behind and pulled the cheeks of my ass apart. I felt a soft puff
of air—Laratin had his nose as close as he could get without touching and
was inhaling my butt fumes. He straightened when he saw me watching
him.
“Used to do it as a child. We called it sniffing bottoms. You had to see
who could get closest. I always won. You smell like a stag.”
He moved the camera to within two feet and fired the flash a couple of
times.
“All done. Buckle up.”
Then the three of us sat in smooth leather armchairs and drank brandy
and soda.
“It’s somewhat unsettling exposing yourself like that, is it not? It feels
like an invasion.”
“I don’t mind, if that’s what you want to do.”
Dean tapped my ankle with the toe of his shoe and looked disapproving.
Laratin made a point of not noticing.
“No, I think you do mind. Anyone would. Something so intimate. Those
are things you save for special people. People you love. For instance, what
you do with Dean, and what he does with you—these aren’t things you’d
share with just anyone, are they?”
 “Well, yeah, you have to keep them for the right time and place.”
“Exactly.”
Dean chimed in: “Sex is an illustration of emotion.”
“Well put, Dean. You like someone, you let them have some sort of
average sex with you. You love them … Well, there are any number of ways
to differentiate, aren’t there? Different grades of love, so to speak. Jack,
how do you know when someone loves you?”
“They do things for you.”
“Close, but I think we can do better. They abandon themselves to you.
That’s what loving another person is—the willingness to give them every
part of yourself.”
“Oh, we do that, don’t we, Jack?” Dean raised his eyebrows and I got
the idea I was supposed to be suggestive.
“You bet, every part.”
Laratin made an Mmm … sound and pressed his thighs together.
“Sounds interesting, sounds positively delightful.”
Dean leaned forward in his chair and seemed suddenly to want to
downplay our positively delightful scenes together.
“Of course, Peter, we keep it all pretty tame.”
“You haven’t plumbed the depths.”
“Jack only wants to give so much. He values me to a particular level. I
have to be satisfied with that.”
It was obvious that some kind of game was being played here, but what
it was I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I wished the sex would start so I
could get it over with and get out into the party again and get another look
at that woman.
“If Dean wants to show you what he does with me, I don’t mind.”
“Really, Jack? It would be a privilege to watch two lovers. I have a
bottle of oil somewhere, I think.”
So Dean and I got bare. He covered me with oil from the bottle Laratin
produced, lifted me up like a bride, and carried me to the rubber covered
bed. We lay together and he slid himself back and forth across me. There
was a lot of kissing, which wasn’t too bad with him, and a lot of slow
stroking. Laratin just sat in his chair and watched. When Dean flipped me
over and went down on my ass, Laratin became a little more involved.
 “Oh, Dean, he must love you if he lets you do that. Tell him you love
him, Jack. Tell him you love him.”
I said it. It was just another step along the road that would eventually
lead me out of there. It wasn’t hard to do.
“But you know, Dean,” and now Laratin had the fly of his pants open,
“I think that Jack might have found someone he loves more.”
Dean lifted his head out of my ass and looked seriously at Laratin.
“I don’t think that’s possible, Peter.”
“Oh, I think it is. You’re not going to deny it, are you, Jack?”
I felt pressure on my thigh from Dean’s hand, urging me to reply. The
play for the evening became clear.
“I love Dean, Peter.”
“Of course you do. But you love me too. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Yes, you’re right, I do.”
Dean’s grip relaxed. Laratin stood up and began taking his clothes off.
His body was firm and tanned.
“Come and show me how much.”
Dean gave me a prod and I rolled off the bed, kneeled in front of
Laratin, and sucked his cock for a while. He made noises of enjoyment,
murmured endearments to me, but he got only half hard. He ran his hands
through my hair.
“You see, Dean, he loves me. You’re not upset, are you? After all, one
person can love two men.”
“I’m okay, I guess.”
“You’re okay? That’s good, Dean. That’s very good.”
He did some more of the head stroking, then pulled his dick out of my
mouth.
“But what if he loved me more than you?”
“I think he loves us both the same.”
“No, Dean, he doesn’t. You’ve had a bit of oral, I’ve had a bit of oral.
Even Stevens. But I haven’t finished. It’ll be best if we show him now,
Jack. It’ll make things easier on him in the long run.”
He took a steel speculum and a tube of lubricant out of a drawer beneath
the bed.
“All fours, Jack.”
 I made like a dog. Laratin warmed up the spreader professionally, like a
doctor, rolling the business end between his palms.
Then it was lube time.
Then it was time to open the back door.
The speculum felt enormous going in. Laratin started off trying not to
hurt, twisting it slowly like a corkscrew. But I hadn’t fully mastered the art
of anal relaxation and he got impatient. Once the first inch was inside he put
his weight behind it and finished the job with a lunge. It hurt so much I
shouted.
And it hurt more when he started turning the knob that ratcheted the two
halves of the device apart. Feeling air on the inside of my colon for the first
time was unusual, but the novelty was overshadowed somewhat by the
sensation that my rectum was about to split.
I shouted again and turned my head, about to tell him to take it the fuck
easy. But I didn’t say anything because, standing with her back against the
door, was the dark-haired woman in the gray two-piece. Dean and Laratin
knew she was there but were acting like she wasn’t. And she was watching
us as though we were part of a show she’d just happened to stumble across
—distanced and evaluating.
I would like to have stood up and turned it all around somehow, made it
plain that this was all just bullshit to me and I was way above it. But Dean
was paying, and I needed the money. So I gave up the dopey dream of
connecting with her that I’d been keeping warm all night, dropped my head,
and figured fuck it, bring it on.
“You see, Dean, what he does with you and what he will do for me are
really worlds apart.”
Laratin jiggled his now flaccid cock between his fingers.
“Admit it, he loves me more than he loves you. And he only just met
me.”
And at that point he showed Dean just how certain he was of my love
by jetting a stream of piss into my stretched-open asshole. It didn’t sting, it
just felt warm and heavy. Occasionally he played it across my ass cheeks,
but most of it went inside. When he was empty and I was full he closed up
the speculum and slid it out.
Dean lay on the rubber bed, faceup, pulling at his hard-on, blowing
kisses at Laratin.
 “I love you too, Peter. Watch this.”
At Dean’s direction I climbed up onto the bed and got into position over
him. My balls brushed his chin and he flicked his tongue over them. I
glanced toward the door, dreading eye contact but wanting to see how the
woman was taking this scene. I felt an unexpectedly strong wash of relief
when I found she was no longer there.
Dean blew his wad straight up into the air. It spacked across his belly
and chest. And I let go with a torrent of someone else’s piss. From my ass
straight to his face.
I heard him gurgle as some of it went up his nose.
And after that it was towels all around, back into clothes, and another
drink.
“I bet you’re marveling at my self-control, aren’t you, Jack? Wondering
how I could restrain myself.”
“If you don’t need to shoot it’s fine by me.”
“Oh, but I do. I’m just savoring the anticipation, leaving myself a treat
for the end of the night.”
“Oh.”
“Why don’t you go back out there and enjoy yourself for an hour or
two? I need to discuss business with Dean here. I’ve kept him waiting long
enough. But remember, Jack, don’t get too friendly with my guests. I won’t
have anyone go slutty on me.”
Dean walked me out the door. When Laratin couldn’t see us he handed
me a wad of money.
“For services rendered.”
“I hope you get your part.”
“Thanks. He’s as mad as a hatter, but what can you do? You will hang
around and let him fuck you later, won’t you? There’s enough there to cover
it.”
“Sure, man.”
“I hope I can trust you. It’ll make everything else a complete waste of
time if you don’t. You understand how important it is to me.”
He kissed me on the cheek and turned back to the asshole room.
I didn’t feel like doing much of anything. The idea of hanging around
till Laratin worked up a head of steam wasn’t particularly appealing. I felt
sore and tired and I wanted to head home. But I kind of liked Dean and I
didn’t want to let him down. So I figured I’d find somewhere quiet to do a
couple of lines and take a walk around the grounds.
But then a hand slid into mine and she was there, the woman, stepping
in front of me, pulling me along a corridor, smiling quickly back at me over
her shoulder. We didn’t speak, we couldn’t, the air around us moved too
quickly. Our world, this space where the two of us were, was happening
outside time, in some other dimension where explanation wasn’t needed,
where all that was necessary was the headlong rush into desire.
We moved deeper into the house—indirect lighting, silk on the walls,
objet d’art. Designed and decorated to inspire envy. She wore no perfume
but the smell of her enfolded me—her hair, her skin, even a faint tang from
between her legs. We moved faster, unable to wait another second, until we
were almost running—dogs to food, sharks to blood—primal and
unthinking.
Into a brightly lit room where a young Mexican maid was working her
way through a pile of ironing. She looked up as we entered, but carried on
with what she was doing, silenced by the woman’s aura of wealth.
In the back of my mind I thought somewhere else might be cooler, but
the woman already had her lips to mine and the need to worry about being
sensible was fast becoming less than paramount. The maid did her best to
ignore us as we struggled at each other, concentrating on a white shirt she
had laid out on the board. But when my dick came out of my pants locked
solid, she yelped and ran from the room.
The woman had her skirt hiked up around her waist, her blouse hung
from her shoulders, open, exposing hard white breasts with dark nipples. I
put my hand between her legs, she was soaking, her cunt hair silky against
my palm. We held each other like fighters and I couldn’t believe how much
feeling she put into it, like we were lovers or something.
I lifted her onto a low cupboard that jutted from a wall. She sat with her
body bent back, braced with her arms, legs open and drawn up so her heels
hung on the edge. I moved in and she took hold of my cock and stabbed
herself with it. It went in smoothly, no caught hair or snarled labia—easy
entry to another body.
We fucked hard. Like some need in both of us fed off our humping,
driving us deeper into each other. It was the first time I’d done it with
anything approaching emotional involvement since the early days with
Karen.
She whispered obscenities through our long panting until, as though we
were juddering back from some years-long trip in hyperspace, the present
folded in around us again and she jerked and moaned and came. I was set to
pump seed as far in as I could get it, but the reality we’d come back to took
a wrong turn. Hands grabbed my shoulders and wrenched me out of her. I
spurted my load over her belly and the outside of her cunt.
Laratin. In a rage. With a couple of hefty guys in waiter’s uniforms,
both of them jostling to be the one with the best grip on me.
“You fucking swine. You … fucking swine. You said you loved me. I
trusted you.”
I could see a vein swelling on his bald head. Behind him, through the
doorway, the Mexican maid peered in then jerked back out of sight. The
woman finished wiping herself down with a tissue and began arranging her
clothes. She seemed supremely unconcerned about the intrusion.
“Really, Peter …”
Laratin turned on her. “This is my house! My house! Do you know how
upsetting this is for me? Everyone knowing that he doesn’t love me?”
“Of course he doesn’t love you, you moron. No one does.”
Laratin shrieked and covered his ears with his hands.
“That isn’t true, that isn’t true. You can’t say that.” Then to the waiters:
“Get him out of here. I won’t stand him in the house a second longer.”
I managed to get my pants back up and they dragged me out of the
room. The woman didn’t say anything or try to stop them. The last shot I
caught of her she was doing up a button on her blouse. Laratin came out
into the corridor and stood there watching as I was hustled along.
“You slut! You piece-of-shit slut!”
He was punching the air as the guys dragged me around a corner.
When we got near the party again the waiters gave me the option of
continuing to the door without assistance—supervised, of course. As a
result the embarrassment factor wasn’t too high. I did feel bad, though,
when I saw Dean slumped on a couch with his face in his hands.
Outside. I hung around for a while, hoping the woman would show. She
didn’t. I looked up at the house and around at the grounds, at the slick cars
still arriving. A piece of the world behind the TV screen—straight out of
dreamtime. Right in front of me. And I was as far away from it as ever.
I was tired. I went to the fountain and splashed water on my face, leaned
there looking for messages in the drifting reflections. Tough luck—
messages are for drunks and madmen. I knew it that night driving along
Ocean Avenue, why should anything have changed?
I walked down the drive. The guy at the gates let me out but wouldn’t
speak to me. I started the long walk down out of the hills to somewhere I
could call a cab from.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Fifteen
Twilight, and Rex had an empty hour before a gig. They’d tweaked his
medication and he was a little smoother than last time I’d seen him. We
went driving in his yellow cabriolet Porsche. On the boulevards neon
glowed in rainbows and the billboard stars looked down without caring
what they saw, too far removed from the endless street hassle to understand
it anyway.
The sidewalks were full of girls for a guy in a fast car, but if they
weren’t paying I wasn’t interested. Californian tits and ass in skintight
clothes—nice to look at, but only one percent of it would get you anywhere.
And I didn’t have the energy to weed out the dross. Rex didn’t even look at
it.
“You fucked it with the Latin.”
“I know.”
“He doesn’t want you to call again.”
“Look, I’m sorry if it comes back on you.”
“I only introduced you. You want to chuck it away, it’s up to you.”
“I didn’t want to chuck it away, I didn’t have any choice. Some things
just have to happen.”
“God, don’t tell me you’ve got a view of the universe now.”
“Just the Californian universe.”
“No other agency’ll touch you.”
“There’s still the drag.”
“Jesus, I hope she was worth it.”
“She was loaded, man. Loaded. You could tell.”
“Don’t go looking for a ready-made life, dude, they don’t exist.
Crawling out of the swamp ain’t that easy. And you know what? When you
think you have finally crawled out, you look around and everything’s still
exactly the same.”
We drove a little while longer, then Rex had to split. I got him to drop
me at a drugstore on La Brea Avenue. It was a big place with a lot of
displays—photo presentations for shampoo and perfume—dream material
that was almost better than the movies. The models were always perfect,
always happy in beautiful clothes and exotic locations. One look and you
knew what type of lives they led—jet set, million-dollar apartment, night-
clubbing, kisses on the cheek, mixing with other people just as good,
restaurants, first-class, five star, step out of a shiny car and snap go the
cameras to pay for it all, then, wow, oh dizzy me, on it all goes …
Yeah, perfume ads are the best. Smooth dark guys and wind-blown
women, life in places like Malibu and Beverly Hills and Paris and London.
Sure, I knew the pictures were staged, but the thing was, the people in them
actually lived like that. The ads weren’t fake in any way, they were a true
representation of what the world was like for the lucky.
Back at Emmet Terrace I phoned into a radio quiz about movie trivia
and won it hands down. The prize was a subscription to a magazine. I got
my photo out and jerked off over it.
On the drag again. For money now, pure and simple. I mouthed cock and
jammed it into buttholes—fagboy extraordinaire. I fell into a routine—get
up late, hang out till I had some dollars, buy food, booze, occasionally some
drugs, make it back to the apartment, and fry myself with TV. Then get up
and do it again. Simple pleasures. But one night there was a variation.
I was a few paces down from a convenience store, waiting for
somebody to rent my dick, when a black Jag pulled up to the curb. I’d been
daydreaming, so a fucked-up surfer beat me to it. He leaned in at the
window and blathered for a while with the silver-haired driver. I moved
closer, like I was bored with standing still, and watched the scene go down.
A few bucks changed hands, but too few for any kind of genital interaction.
It puzzled me until the surfer headed for the store, then I clicked—a bottle
for company.
I was beside the surfer at the liquor counter before the door closed on its
pneumatic hinge. A few seconds pretending to check out the high-octane
booze to make things look good, then in with a bit of sincere hustler-to-
hustler chat.
“Say, did I see you with that guy out there? In the black Jag?”
Surfman recognized me as a fellow bum-boy so his reaction wasn’t
quite as fuck-off as it might have been.
“Yeah, the cunt sprung for some booze.”
 I waited while he made an intelligent selection—maximum specific
gravity per dollar, change straight into his pocket.
“He’s an old geezer with silver hair, right? You want to watch yourself,
man.”
“Huh?”
“Haven’t you heard about him? Fuck, they call him the Silver Slicer.”
“Whaaat?”
Surfman didn’t want to believe this because a guy in a Jag was certain
to lay out bread, but hustling is a vulnerable profession and too many boys
turn up dead in vacant lots for advice to be taken lightly.
“No shit, man. I tricked with him once and I was lucky to get out alive.
I’m sucking away, right, and the fucker pulls out this razor and slices me
across the shoulders. Right through my fucking shirt.”
“No shit!”
Surfman’s eyes were wide and round and his mouth hung open like
something in a cartoon.
“You want to see the scar?” I started pulling my shirt out of my pants.
He stopped me quickly.
“No, man, I don’t want to see the scar, he might be looking through the
window. And he’ll know I know.”
“And if he knows, you’re fucked. You’ll have him on your ass every
time you look over your shoulder. It’ll happen, man, it’ll happen. Look at
me, he’s been trying to finish me off ever since I split with my back hanging
open.”
“Motherfuck.”
“Yeah, it don’t make things easy, I can tell you. But, shit, I was lucky, I
didn’t get the full Slicer treatment.”
“The full treatment …”
Surfman was off in his head conjuring possible Slicer death scenarios.
“Yeah, the full fucking treatment. You hear about that kid they found
behind a liquor store on De Longpre?”
“What kid?”
“Young Mexican kid, used to work down here.”
“Yeah, man, I think I did.”
“The Slicer, man. The full fucking treatment. Cut his dick into strips
and peeled it back like a banana. Peeled his whole fucking body like a
banana.”
“Motherfuck. I’m not getting in that car.”
“Fuck, man, don’t even go out on the street. Just stay where it’s good
and bright and pray he ain’t feeling bold tonight.”
“Bold?”
“Came after me in McDonalds one night.”
“Holy shit, McDonalds …” Surfman was momentarily lost for words,
then: “I’m taking the backdoor, man. You coming?”
“Can’t do it. He got his first taste of street blood through me. I feel like
I owe you. I’ll hang out here and slow him down if he makes a move. You
split. Just … Just have a drink for me if I end up in the papers.”
Surfman gripped my forearm and looked hard into my face like this was
all real-life Dirty Dozen.
“Thanks, man.”
Then he was gone, dust at his heels and me the farthest thing from his
mind.
Outside and up to the Jag, looking earnest and like I only wanted to help.
“Er, excuse me. You give that blond guy some bread?”
English coachwork and soft brown leather, walnut dash around LCD
readouts. The guy sitting in it was definitely the man I was after. Sixty,
maybe—but looking good for it—light tan, thick silver hair swept back
from the forehead, strong face with noble features, pale eyes that looked
odd under the streetlight—less responsive than you’d expect. He wore a
dark suit, conservatively tailored, and a tie.
He looked up at me, not fazed at all by a new face at his window, even
in that part of town.
“I beg your pardon.”
“That surfer guy, just went into the store. You give him some money?”
“He wanted to buy something to drink. I gave him ten dollars, yes.”
“I don’t want to offend you, but this part of town and all, you were
probably expecting to take a ride with him somewhere. Right?”
“I had something I wanted to talk to him about, though perhaps not
what you imagine.”
“Whatever it was you can’t do it now. He split with your bread. There’s
a back way out of there.”
 No anger, just a small “Oh.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen him pull it a hundred times.”
“You know him well?”
“I couldn’t tell you his name, but you hang around here long enough,
you see things.”
Silverhair clicked on with a smile.
“Do you spend a lot of time on the streets?”
“Man’s got to eat.”
“Where are you from?”
“Detroit.”
“Ah. That is where your family lives?”
“They’re all dead.”
“And you live by prostitution?”
“That’s what happens on this side of the street, man.”
“Of course. I ask only to see if I might be in a position to offer you
some help.”
“Help?”
“I was about to offer it to our thirsty friend before he ran off. I can see
you are in a similar situation, so I’ll offer it to you. Would you like to get
into the car while we talk?”
“Sure, man.” I said it like I knew what he really wanted was to score
some butt and opened the door.
“I’d prefer it if you sat in the back.”
“Uh, okay.”
Silverhair pulled away from the curb, he talked as he drove.
“I work for a doctor whose usual practice caters to the wealthy of our
society, but occasionally we like to do a little charity work. To pass on our
good fortune, so to speak. To this end I search the streets for suitable
candidates. Are you interested?”
“What do I have to do?”
“You don’t have to do anything. We offer a free medical checkup, any
minor treatment you might require, vitamin shots, a clean bed, and two
hundred dollars.”
“How long do I have to stay?”
“It usually takes the doctor about two days to run tests and administer
treatment.”
 “No sex?”
“Absolutely not. Hard to believe these days, I know, but all we want to
do is to help people.”
“This, er, medical treatment, I don’t have to have it if I don’t want to, do
I?”
His eyes flashed up in the mirror, reassuring, shocked at the suggestion
that anything might be forced on me.
“Of course not. It’s there for you only if you choose it.”
I took a long breath and wondered what the fuck I was doing.
“Okay. I could use two hundred bucks. Let’s go.”
We’d been circling aimlessly during our conversation, now he pointed
the Jag out of Hollywood and toward the wide quiet of Beverly Hills. Just
after we turned off Sunset he twisted sideways in his seat and stuck his hand
out like he was offering me something.
“You should look at this before we arrive.”
I leaned forward, trying to work out what it was. He seemed to be
holding some kind of aerosol, like one of those purse-size cans of
deodorant. When I saw where its nozzle was pointed I started to think that
maybe having my head so close to it wasn’t the best idea. But it was too late
by then. A hail of tumbling pin-prick droplets coned out of Silverhair’s
hand and into my face.
I jerked back. The stuff didn’t hurt, but it tasted chemical, and it went to
work right away. Seemed like old Joey had left a little piece out of his story
back at Bar Ramses—the part where you got drugged on the way to the
clinic. I reached for the door handle. Guess what? Central locking. I tugged
weakly at it once or twice, but my motor skills were already too corroded.
My body relaxed in spite of itself and increasing waves of anesthetic
warmth rippled out from my hips and spine into the soft matter of my cells.
In any other situation it would have been yummy, but rolling toward a place
where people got things cut out of them it was alarming to say the least. I
slumped in my seat moronstyle and thought about shouting, until I realized
I didn’t know what shouting meant. Breathing looked to be about the
maximum achievable level of function, so I stuck with that and forgot about
things like vocalization and limb mobility.
“Do you like it? Most of you seem to, once you stop panicking. In a
minute you’ll become unconscious. Don’t worry, nothing will happen to
you. This is just a precaution to safeguard the doctor’s anonymity. I repeat,
nothing will happen to you. You’ll wake up shortly between clean sheets
…”
His words didn’t reassure me. I stopped listening. And then I passed
out.
Zap. Out of no thought into too much. Too much feeling, anyhow. Hard
road surface under me, cutting into my cheek and elbows. Clothes damp,
muscle-ache from head to toe. And something tugging at my ass, pulling at
the material of my jeans.
I opened my eyes. Dawn light on backstreet tarmac. Weeds growing
through cracks. Belly-down between trash cans. And that fucking tugging
…
I groaned and moved my arms. The tugging stopped and someone
behind me said, “The cunt’s still alive,” and someone else said, “Hurry the
fuck up, then.” Cracked voices—too much street time and Thunderbird.
They started on my back pockets again. Material ripped. My head felt foggy
and my eyes were gummed, but gut instinct took over and put my body to
work.
I rolled onto my back and kicked without aiming. Thin air. Two scuzzy
winos in scuzzed-up coats—gabardine once, perhaps, but now just
something to soak up piss and sweat.
They backed off a couple of steps and stood with their red faces and
calcified eyes looking down at me—not guilty like they’d been caught at
something illegal, but wary and waiting for another chance at whatever they
thought I had in my pockets.
Crows.
Hyenas.
I felt zoned, like I’d got up too early after a night of speed, but the
winos were old and physically fucked and it was easy to catch them. At first
they thought it was going to be the kind of superficial beating tramps get as
a matter of course every couple of weeks—bloody nose, black eye, that sort
of thing—and when I got hold of them they started to curse me. But that
stopped pretty quickly.
The first one collapsed after I laid a fist into his Adam’s apple, fell to
his knees, and made choking noises, contorting his mouth to try and get air
past the ball of blood and gristle he’d just found in his throat. Number two
backed into a wall and took a few in the guts, stupidly doubled up, and got a
knee in the face which split his nose and bounced the back of his head off
the corner of an air-conditioning exhaust vent.
After that I was too tired to carry on. So I walked out of the alley onto a
secondary road and went hunting for early-morning coffee. I had things to
think about.
I was in Hollywood, within walking distance of Emmet Terrace. A
block east of the Chinese Theater I found what I needed, a twenty-four-hour
grease joint; vagrants, whores, junkies, and fuck-ups—pinned eyes and
sucked-white skin—trying to make believe another day wasn’t starting.
“I want my burger, and I want it NOW! I said I want it NOW!”
A black guy, totally fritzed and not in a mood to be trifled with, had a
problem with the service. He stood at the chest-high counter sweating and
rolling his head, running his palms over the hot glass and polished steel.
“I paid for the motherfucker and I want it. Hear what I said? You think
it’s funny, holding my burger back there? You think that’s funny? I can see
it, man. That’s my burger right there. What did you say? I need a WHAT?
WHAT? Yes you did, you ofay motherfuck, you said NIGGERBURGER!”
He started to climb over the counter, but two cops came in just then and
maced him and dragged him out to their vehicle. It was quieter after that.
I ordered a pint of coffee and found that the winos hadn’t been the first
to come across me in the alley. Small change, keys, and wallet—gone.
Inconvenient, but not major—nothing in the wallet but twenty bucks and
the Latin’s business card. I had a spare for the Prelude back at the
apartment, and the super would have one for my door. I paid with a fifty I
kept in my sock for just such an L.A. emergency, bummed a cigarette from
a couple of hookers, and found a table in a patch of sun. Outside, the cops
had the black guy cuffed and in the car and were feeding him pieces of a
hamburger through the open rear window.
Alone—sitting, smoking, stirring sugar into my coffee.
What was the story? One minute, night in the back of a Jaguar heading
for Kidney City, the next, flat on my face in dawntime Hollywood with
vags going through my pockets. I checked my guts. No scar, no cut.
Evidently I had been spared the doc’s kidney acquisitiveness. But what
about the free medical treatment? The free dope and the horny nurse? Had
that happened and been wiped with chemicals? Or had things been
interrupted for some reason before the knives came out?
Quick date check with the nearest table. Yep, the morning after. I’d been
gone, shit, not even six hours. Maybe much less, depending on how long I
was out in the alley. Fucking bizarre.
I tried to recall an image, a smell, a sound. Anything. But there was
only Silverhair’s drug spray and a minute of his babble afterwards … And
something which had to be a phantom memory, the imprint of a past dream.
I tried to shake it, but it lingered. The sensation of lips … a mouth …
sucking … on my … On my dick? I’d been drugged and dumped in an
alley, scavenged by winos, and the thing that haunted me was the
impossible memory of a blow job?
I needed downtime.
But first there was the hassle of tracking down the super to get my key.
No sweat. The washrooms would yield something for sure, there were
enough drag-ass end-of-the-nighters around to make it worthwhile for
someone. I finished my coffee.
At the sink in the men’s room a Chicano chick was washing her cunt—
miniskirt hiked past her hips, briefs around her knees, a lather of soap over
her bush and the tops of her thighs. Her hand made sucking noises as she
moved it backwards and forwards. Oblivious, baby. On some other planet
where you could do this kind of thing. She hummed to herself, something
that sounded like “Lover Man,” her eyes were focused way beyond the
surface of the mirror.
A guy in chinos and an Australian surf shirt lounged in an open stall and
watched her absently. I scored a wrap off him and did it on top of the paper-
towel dispenser.
Bang. Out on the street. The coke had been badly cut, but there was
enough of something in it to make getting home and getting a key easier
than it might have been. I moved through the smoggy, sunlit morning air
like I was jet-propelled. Over pink concrete and dirty brass stars with the
names of famous people on them. I thought about how those people must
all be waking up in places a lot cleaner than Hollywood Boulevard, about
how they probably shuddered when they had to come down here for a
premiere or something.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Sixteen
The Latin called. I had the blinds down against the afternoon sun and the
light in the room was calm and isolated. The bleep of the phone made me
jump, incoming calls were not frequent.
“You have a job.”
“Oh, hi.”
“Do not mistake this for forgiveness. The only reason I give it to you is
that she insisted.”
“I understand.”
“Clean up whatever pigsty you live in. She will come to you.”
“Who?”
“Someone with money, that much is certain. Of which you will get
none. Call it an apology for the damage you did my business.”
“What does she look like?”
“I could not say—she phoned. I wanted to send her Rex, but she
described you and would not be dissuaded.”
The afternoon rotted outside. I lay on the bed and remembered how the
girl in the warehouse had looked. Not her actual death, but the way her
body had lain so still and heavy on the floor after they put the jackhammer
away, like something made of rubber. The image got me hard and I would
have jerked off if I hadn’t had a gig.
She turned up around nine.
I opened the door and for a second the world seemed to shimmer in a kind
of horizontal vertigo. I had trouble understanding what I saw. Then
everything synched up again and I let her in. The woman from the party, of
course.
She walked to the middle of the room. I’d made an attempt at tidying it,
but with her there it looked as attractive as an open wound. She turned
slowly, scanning, and the light blouse she was wearing pulled tight against
her breasts. There was no disgust on her face at what she saw, not even
surprise, just a neutral taking-in of her surroundings.
 It was all scripted and cinematically perfect. The way we locked eyes,
the warm breeze through the open window, even the way the evening city
light flung itself across the floor to make a languid pen about her feet.
The quilted Chanel bag she was carrying slid from her arm. She shook
her hair free of a small gold clip and stepped out of her shoes. The buttons
on her blouse didn’t snag as they came undone—TV buttons, doing their bit
for this TV scene. The blouse was silk, it took forever to drift to the floor.
Three steps and I was against her. She pressed her face to the side of my
neck. All my clothes and the rest of hers fell away. I was solid and she was
soaking and both of us were in some twilight heaven of the senses where
touch and taste and sight and smell were all one supersense that did not
differentiate.
A leg snaked around my thigh. I lifted her onto my cock. We fucked
standing up, jerking and balancing and moaning at each other, straining in
the warm air. Sweat ran between her tits and over my stomach. Our faces
were wet with spit. Her kisses fell in smears from my forehead to my chin.
I pushed my middle finger into her ass, as far as it would go. She
spasmed and we almost fell. I pumped come then lowered her to the floor
and stood over her looking down, the last of my jism dripping onto her
belly.
Later. On the bed, nighttime L.A. scouting the room—sodium light and
dry air that felt freshly washed even though it carried, as always, its
signature scents: eucalyptus, exhaust, pizza, doughnuts, coffee, and, even
this far inland, something that would have been missing without the sea.
Her name was Bella and she was a few years past thirty. Her skin was
expensively healthy and her clothes were expensively tailored. But money
had been obvious from the start.
And beyond this, I could feel something intangible—her power, a sense
of otherness that rose from her like a dark perfume. There, but potently
indefinable.
The sheets were wet. We stank of fish. I blew cigarette smoke at the
ceiling.
“How did you find me?”
“Your friend gave me the number of your agency.”
“My friend?”
“The man you were with.”
 “He was paying.”
“Obviously.”
“You must have been impressed.”
“I have the luxury of being able to act on my feelings.”
“And what are they?”
She didn’t answer, just looked around the room, then:
“Are you really this poor?”
“Poorer.”
“Why?”
“Because I am. What do you mean?”
Bella twisted to arrange her pillow then propped herself against the
wall. While her back was toward me I noticed she had a tattoo at the base of
her spine. In the dim light it looked similar to the scarab Karen had on her
shoulder blade. She waved at the apartment.
“You’re good-looking and smart. You could do better.”
“Everyone’s good-looking and smart in California. What’s that saying
about wishes?”
“What do you mean?”
“If wishes were horses …”
“… beggars would ride?”
“Yeah, that’s it. You have money, obviously.”
“Yes.”
“Where from?”
“My mother’s family, back a few generations. Water and oil. I’m not
talking anything like that, though, just something better than you have.”
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
“Do you want to stay a hustler?”
“It’s a distraction. But after the other night I don’t expect I’ll be
working much.”
“Distraction is important to you?”
“Isn’t it for everyone? Sometimes?”
“How far do you go for it?”
There was something about her eyes when she asked this that made me
feel a little out of my depth.
“Oh, just the usual perversions.”
 “I don’t think there is anything usual about you at all. You have a small
life, but you want a bigger one, I can tell. And it’s possible, Jack. It could
happen. All it takes is the courage to push yourself further than the rest of
the sheep.”
Maybe she thought she’d got a little too intense because she paused for
a second, then went on like it hadn’t been important.
“What would you do if you had your choice of jobs?”
“Something on TV, I guess.”
“What, exactly?”
“I’d like to present a show on movie stars, one of those ‘Hollywood
Report’ things. I’ve done a course in telehosting.”
“I don’t watch a lot of TV myself.”
“Too lowbrow for you?”
“Not really, I just find other people pointless.”
She split later that night.
And five minutes after she’d gone, Ryan arrived. Opened the door with
his G-man tool kit and walked straight in. I didn’t bother to get out of bed.
He sat on the edge of the table.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“And we had such fun together last time.”
“I’m not in the mood for another girlie show.”
“This is more in the line of business. I’ve been talking to some of the
hookers who worked the same patch as Karen, turns out she was pally with
a couple. Wanna take a stab at what they told me? No? Well, it seems she
was loaded just before she disappeared. You know what I’m saying? She
was in possession of a disproportionately large amount of cash. Didn’t say
where she got it, but she flashed it around plenty. Don’t tell me you don’t
know anything about it.”
“We weren’t close at the end. Whatever money she had was her own
business.”
“Let’s talk about that shiny slope-wagon you drive.”
“What about it?”
“Jackie …”
Ryan put on a dangerous face and flexed his fingers.
“Okay. All right. The car was a present. She bought it for me.”
 “Yeah. DMV lists it as being registered in your name only eight days
before she was found. You didn’t think that might be important? Like it
couldn’t possibly have something to do with what happened to her?”
“I don’t see what buying a car could—”
“I’m talking about the money, fuckhole. Where did she get it?”
“I don’t know. The last time I saw her she split because I was hassling
her to tell me. We had a fight about it.”
Ryan shook his head and moved to sit down next to me on the mattress.
I shifted closer to the wall.
“Jackie, seems like every day turns up something else that don’t look
good for you. You shoulda told me about the money.”
He took hold of the sheet and lifted it so he could look at my body. I
knocked his hand away. He smirked and stood up.
“Got anything to drink?”
“Jesus, don’t you ever buy your own?”
“Not when I got friends like you.”
He went into the kitchen and came back with Southern and two glasses,
filled both of them, and stuck one out at me. I didn’t take it at first, but he
kept it there until I did.
“I owe you for checking me into that motel.”
I didn’t say anything, just stared past him out the window at a night that
had no depth to it—a black sheet that looked like it was going to hang there
forever. He sipped his drink for a while, then cleared his throat delicately.
“I saw a little thing on the drag the other night. Maybe you can help me
with it.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You and someone in a black Jaguar.”
“A black Jag? I don’t remember …”
“Yeah, you do. You talked for a couple of minutes, then you got in and
drove to Beverly Hills. It didn’t look like your average faggot pickup.”
“You’re still following me?”
“I put my heart into my work. Who was it? Where did you go?”
“If you were following you ought to know.”
“The Beverly Hills Patrol thought I looked suspicious trailing such a
fine car and pulled me over. By the time we straightened things out I’d lost
sight of you.”
 “Jesus, you’re so far gone even other cops don’t recognize you.”
“Careful, Jackie.”
“Well, fucksake, you don’t think that’s ridiculous?”
Ryan shrugged.
“They’re a private outfit. Answer the question.”
“Shit, it was just some guy who wanted a blow job. We parked near
Sunset, I did it, then he split. That’s all.”
“Name? Description?”
“I don’t spend a lot of time looking at their faces, you know? Why
didn’t you check his license plate?”
“I did—no trace. Which means the plates were false. Which means I
want to know even more.”
“What can I say? Show me his cock, maybe I’ll recognize it.”
“Okay, try this one. Who was the slit you had in here. Arrived about
nine.”
“You’ve been out there that long?”
“Like I said, I put my heart into it.”
“She could have been visiting anyone in the building.”
“But she wasn’t. Too much money to hang around a place like this,
something odd about it. And if it’s odd and in this building, my money says
it’s you.”
“I do some work for an agency. They sent her over. I don’t know
anything about her.”
“Looked like a good fuck.”
“She was.”
“Which way did you give it to her?”
“Fucksake.”
“Come on, Jackie. From behind, like a couple of dogs? Woof, woof,
woof. Well? Don’t tell me you just got on top.”
“We did it different ways.”
“Like?”
“Jesus. Standing up, bent over the table, in bed with her on top.”
“That’s better. How about when she sucked you off? Did she swallow,
or did she make you squirt it over her tits? I like it when they let it dribble
down their chin.”
“Can we drop it, Ryan?”
 “Bet I know more about her than you do.”
“Sure.”
“You know her pussy, but I know her name and where she lives. You
see what she was driving? Beemer, eight series. I ran the plates through
DMV. She’s a Malibu baby, prime-sector address. Would you like that info,
Jackie? Huh?”
“What for? It was work.”
I would have liked her address, for sure, but I was fucked if I was going
to ask fatso for anything.
“How about I get her number and you call her up and ask her back for a
freebie and I set it up so we can video it?”
“Fuck off.”
“That bitch looks like she could lay out plenty.”
I put my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. I heard Ryan
pour himself another drink. I wished I was someone famous enough to have
lawyers and bodyguards to make him go away.
“Maybe you’re right. A scam like that takes a bit of planning.”
I kept my eyes closed and didn’t respond. After a while he left.
***

Early A.M. In my room with the blinds shut tight. Cigarette smoke in the air
and an awful silence outside. I lay on my back with the lights off, straining
to hear the sound of traffic—a police siren, a gun shot, anything to let me
know there was a world out there and that I was still part of it, that I wasn’t
as completely alone as I felt.
I had come on my hands, my thighs, over my belly. The crowbar picture
was on the floor by the mattress. I’d lost count of how many times I’d
jerked off over it. All I knew was that my dick had finally gone soft and that
the five Lorazepam I’d stuck under my tongue an hour before had started to
take hold. I couldn’t see the picture too clearly anymore but it was burned
into my head—heavy white flesh, black steel jammed up her ass. If I hadn’t
had the pills I wouldn’t have been able to stand the desire to see what her
body actually felt like. I imagined it as cold and smooth and quiet.
An hour after dawn I fell asleep.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Seventeen
Rex was up, way up. A brittle high-powered energy that kept him shifting
in the seat of the Porsche like his legs wanted to run off by themselves.
Dusk. Chasing the yellow burn of the headlights through poorly lit
residential streets near the ass-end of Burbank. We had the top off and the
stereo cranked up. The air blew in across us like a high-speed dream. All
the ingredients for a scene from a teen movie—high school buddies tearing
it up after the prom. But there was none of that wild innocence in either of
us. I was living in a twilight world. And Rex was rollercoasting between the
poles of a deepening emotional imbalance.
We were out for smack. Or rather, Rex was. I was along for the ride and
maybe a taste. Outside the car rows of clapboard houses slipped by, neat
and well-kept, but you knew every waking hour lived in them was sucked
dry by the battle to make ends meet—front gardens with small dusty lawns
and the odd desiccated gum tree, waist-high chain-link fences, small cars
parked on short concrete driveways, kids here and there, booted out of the
house so dad or mom could get an hour’s peace before the terror of
dinnertime.
Rex drove fast, slinging the car around corners, not because we were
racing to make a connection, but because there was no other way he could
off-load the brittle anxiety that rode him.
“This guy better be in, man, he better be in. I feel like I’m going to
burst.”
“I’ve got downers at my place.”
“Not good enough tonight, not anesthetic enough.”
“The Prothiaden didn’t work out?”
“It works, man, it works. Why the fuck you think I’m like this? Spins
your fucking head around. Up. Down. I can’t tell anymore.”
“Stop taking it.”
“Doesn’t make any difference. This does, though.”
He stuck his arm out so the sleeve of his shirt pulled back. He had a
number of small bruises on the inside of his forearm. Nothing you could
call tracks, but I was surprised they were there at all.
“You want to get sharper needles.”
“Yeah, man, that’s what I want. Sharper needles, bigger bags of smack,
something that’ll suck my brain out, wash it clean, and stick it back. I want
a million things, man, a million things and just one. I just want it to stop.”
I’d like to think I would have said something sensitive at this point. But
I didn’t get the chance. Rex had just rocketed around another corner into a
street that was mostly empty lots and looked deserted. He was working the
stick and doing some mad thing with his head, shaking it like he had a
maggot trying to eat from one ear to the other, when a boy about nine years
old ran into the street chasing a volley ball. If he’d been driving normally he
might have had a chance at stopping. As it was he didn’t have time to hit
the brakes until after the impact.
The boy came up over the hood, hit the windscreen, and flew. I had an
absurd shot of him through the open roof, cart-wheeling against the dark
sky, head down, blond hair in a fan around his face. Then the brakes took
hold, no screech, they were ABS, and Rex slewed the car to the curb. For a
moment he sat there gripping the wheel, eyes screwed shut, as though he
thought that with enough effort he could close down his senses. Then we
were out, running back along the road to the body.
The boy, incredibly, lay straight out, faceup, legs together. The only
thing that made it look like he hadn’t just laid down for a nap was the way
his left arm was twisted sharply behind his back.
But he was dead, there was no question.
A lot of things went through my head. I felt bad that a young life had
been snuffed out, I tried to figure possible legal penalties, I wondered how
his parents were going to react, if they’d start screaming when they found
him. But thrown across all of this was the overwhelming relief that I had
not been driving.
I looked at Rex. And I felt bad for him. He was gray and all the blood or
life or whatever it was seemed to have withdrawn itself from him. He stood
there, head bent, looking down at the boy, arms forgotten at his sides,
sucked empty by the world. I thought he might vomit and howl, but he just
stood. And then he sighed and his breath caught like he was going to cry.
But he didn’t. Instead, he turned and walked back to the car and we drove
away.
 No one came out onto the street. No one had seen us. And somehow
both of us knew that nothing would come of this. That we’d skate. Rex
didn’t drive fast, didn’t drive like we had to get away, and we rolled out of
the neighborhood, not to accusing shrieks and wails of grief, but to the
sound of his German engine and the rustle of wind in dry gum leaves.
We didn’t speak, and we didn’t turn around and go home. We went on
to the connection.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Eighteen
I started the day puking. Rex and I had stayed up half the night shooting
smack. When the drugs took hold he’d opened up about the accident. He
said he was never going to recover from it. I tried to offer some sort of
comfort, but what can you do? It was his bag of misery and he was the only
one who could carry it. The amount of difference you can make to another
human being in a situation like that is really pretty limited. After a while I’d
passed out. He’d left sometime after that. And now I’d woken up with a
dope hangover that had turned every cell in my body against itself.
I crawled across the floorboards to the bathroom and heaved into the
toilet until all I had left was black bile that stuck to the side of the bowl. It
was midday before I could get off my knees. I found a blister of DF 118s
and managed to get a handful down. It took a long time for the painkillers
to kick in. I spent it waiting next to the toilet. A couple of hours later I woke
up with tile impressions across my cheek and shoulder and although I didn’t
really feel it, there must have been some improvement because I was able to
lurch to the kitchen and make coffee.
I was standing with a mug by an open window, breathing slowly and
fighting my stomach, when Bella phoned. She wanted me to meet her that
night for a media bash downtown and she wanted me to wear a suit. The
good news was that she was going to messenger over the necessary bucks.
The bad news was that I would have to brave the outside world almost
immediately to go get it.
Rodeo Drive. I took a cab. I could have gone somewhere cheaper, but Bella
had sent a lot of money and it seemed stupid not to use as much of it as I
could. I carried a plastic shopping bag with me for emergencies.
I’d never bought a suit before, but Versace was mentioned in all the
mags, so I found the place and went inside. Lots of empty floor space, most
of it marble, a few pieces of arty furniture, and a collection of very beautiful
assistants. Straight, I’d never have had the guts to go in there. As it was, the
horror of my hangover and the pills I’d taken insulated me from the worst
of my inferiority.
A redheaded girl in leather pants that separated her labia picked out
several sets of clothes for me to try on and escorted me to a changing room
the same size as my apartment. Every time I glanced at her I caught these
looks like she was really trying hard to be as nice to me as she would to
anyone who didn’t look as though they’d just eaten a plate of dog shit. It
was an effort for her but I appreciated it. It was way better than outright
disdain.
She told me to call her if I needed anything and closed the door. I didn’t
need her and I didn’t want her. I wanted to curl up in a ball in the corner and
never go outside again. I was sweating and all the moving around had made
my head start to pound. I made the mistake of bending down to untie my
shoes. My stomach roared. The good thing was that I hadn’t let go of my
trusty plastic bag and was able to catch the jet of steaming gut acid before it
spoiled the decor. The bad thing was that the redhead came in while I still
had my face in the bag. And when I lifted my head to attempt a food-
poisoning excuse I could feel I had something stuck around the outside of
my mouth. She backed out and I didn’t see her again till I settled the bill.
I chose a dark, three-button silk number. It fit pretty well, but the
trousers were a little long. One of the assistants offered to have them taken
up if I’d wait twenty minutes, but that was an absurd suggestion. So I took
the suit as it was, laid down most of Bella’s money, and split to the street
and the cab I’d kept waiting.
I had the dry heaves most of the way through Beverly Hills and I knew I
wasn’t going to make it through the coming evening without some sort of
chemical prop. I had the driver detour through the side streets around the
drag. When he sussed what I was doing he started to get shitty, but I told
him I’d give him a cut of the deal and he got flexible quickly enough.
Eight-thirty saw me downtown, standing out front of the Bradbury
Building. The area is a dump at the best of times, but afterhours, when the
drones have gone home, it turns into a creepy wasteland best avoided if you
aren’t carrying a gun. I was safe enough, though. They’d rigged up an
entrance awning with a lot of bright lights, and there were enough
uniformed guys running to park cars and manning the door to scare away
the human shit that would ordinarily have been heaped on the sidewalk.
I felt better than I had earlier that day, the puking had stopped and the
pain in my head had fallen to a low-level throb. But between all the DFs I’d
dropped and the coke I’d snorted while dressing for this third connection
with Bella, I was pretty spaced. I hadn’t realized there would be valet
parking, so I’d come by cab rather than risk leaving the Prelude on the
streets, and now I had nowhere to wait until she showed with the invites. So
I stood and watched the cars arrive.
Black limos, white limos, a few two-door exotics. The people getting
out of them glowed with wealth. The women wore pearls and diamonds
around their throats, their bodies were toned and supple, they moved with
an erect grace, aware of their own importance. The men strode with these
women on their arms like sated beasts of prey, sleek with the knowledge
that they could have anything in the world they desired. They were a
tailored and massaged and personally exercised golden race who had
reduced amounts of money that would make an ordinary man choke to
nothing more than points in a game they played among themselves.
An auto horn blipped discreetly. I turned to see Bella climbing from a
stretch, a chauffeur holding the door for her. She was wearing a short dark
skirt and as she scissored her legs out onto the sidewalk I caught a flash of
white briefs fringed, between her thighs, with black cunt hair.
“Hello, Jack. I’ve missed you.”
She kissed me. I felt the heat of her breasts through my suit coat.
The Bradbury Building is one of the most beautiful in L.A. Five or six
stories high, it was built a hundred and fifty years ago out of some kind of
brown stone and it looks pretty much Art Nouveau. Inside, things are laid
out around a central atrium that rises clear to the top of the building. At
each floor there is an exposed walkway and off these doors lead to the
offices of lawyers and accountants. Dark wood, wrought iron, and a set of
cage elevators you can watch going up and down. Ridley Scott shot the end
sequence of Blade Runner there.
Tonight the offices were closed, but the ground floor and the first two
walkways were open and decorated in an Alice in Wonderland theme.
Polystyrene grandfather clocks had been wedged into odd corners, a four-
foot automated caterpillar puffed smoke from a water pipe on top of a
mushroom, bottles labeled “Drink Me” were scattered around on small
tables. Behind the buffet, the catering staff were dressed in character. I
thought it looked cool, but Bella didn’t seem impressed.
“Do you drink? I don’t. Get one if you like, this isn’t a sit-down thing.”
I scored a couple of vodkas from a waiter dressed like a fat English
schoolboy, tipped them into one glass, and followed Bella up some stairs to
the second of the walkways. Up that high, we were almost alone.
“We don’t mingle?”
“With those people?”
On the ground floor men and women chatted in groups, helped
themselves to food, drank drinks, laughed, and had a good time.
“They look okay to me. What’s it for?”
“Profile raising for a cable station. Don’t you think they look like pigs
at a trough?”
“You really think they’re that bad?”
“You don’t know them. With all their money not one of them has the
courage to look at themselves. They take cocaine, perhaps have sex with
more than one person, and they think they know what it is to test the limits
of their morality.”
We looked down on the people for a while, then Bella asked me if I
wanted another drink. I wasn’t too bothered about more alcohol, the vodka
had burned my stomach and I didn’t want to start puking again, but I said
yes because it meant we’d be back in the action.
We made the ground floor and headed for the bar. I ordered coke.
“If you don’t like these people, why did we come?”
“For you. Do you know what these people do? The ones that do
anything?”
“I recognize a couple of actors.”
“Mostly management and major stockholders. You said you wanted to
present a movie show, I thought it might be useful for you to have some
contact with the people involved.”
“Jesus, I was only dreaming.”
“How difficult can it be, talking to a camera?”
Bella scanned.
 “You see that girl there? In the white skirt? They found her in a pie
store. Now she does what you want to do.”
The girl Bella pointed out was Lorn from 28 FPS. White mini, white
crop top, punky hair. In the flesh she still looked good, but real life removed
some of the definition from her features. Where Bella had a sharp dark
radiance, Lorn’s attractiveness veered more toward the kind of Californian
tomboyishness Heather Locklear had in Dynasty, before she bitched up for
Melrose.
“Hey, I watch her all the time. Do you know her?”
“Vaguely. I have money in the channel.”
Bella looked at her watch.
“It’s getting late. There’s someone we need to talk to.”
“It’s only ten o’clock.”
“I have to get back to Malibu.”
“Not Beverly Hills?”
“The only people who live in Beverly Hills are those who can’t afford
to leave, and those who don’t have the taste to know any better.”
Bella beckoned to a thickset man with curly gray hair who was talking
to what looked like a group of subordinates. He immediately slapped a few
upper arms, worked his way out of the huddle, and came over to us.
“Bella, this is a surprise.”
He had a fleshy voice that made me think of cigars. He didn’t do the
usual cheek-kissing thing.
“Hello, Howard.”
“What do you think of the decoration? We went all out.”
“I couldn’t imagine anything less original. How’s the channel?”
“Going from strength to strength, baby. Increasing audience points
weekly.”
“Good. Howard, this is Jack. He’s interested in working on a movie
news show.”
Howard shook my hand and glanced at the cuffs of my trousers.
“Good to meet ya, Jack. It’s a hard racket to crack. Lot of young people
want in on it. Had any experience?”
“Well, I’ve done a tele—“
Bella cut in and nodded across the room toward Lorn.
“That girl does a show.”
 “Sure. 28 FPS. Great ratings, lot of interest. We might syndicate next
year.”
“She’s attractive, but do you really think she’s right for it? She doesn’t
look particularly … cerebral.”
“This is TV, who wants cerebral? She’s young, she’s got great tits, she
can talk. It’s enough already.”
“I wonder what she really brings to the table, though.”
“Hey, indulge me.” And here Howard winked at me. “I’ve been doing
this all my life. I think I can pick people. Gorgeous, lovely people like you
provide the bankroll, for which I’m eternally grateful. But running the
channel, well, that’s what I know best. That’s, what do you call it? My
forte.”
Bella went on as if she hadn’t heard him.
“It’s my feeling, Howard, that she would benefit from a little assistance.
Perhaps a partner on the show.”
“You mean Jack here?”
“You should consider it.”
“Bella. Bella, darling, the girl’s doing fine as she is. If it ain’t broken,
don’t fix it. You know what I’m saying?”
“Letting you know my thoughts, Howard. I hope you’ll take them on
board.”
A reasonable tone, but the threat was there. I could see its impact in the
tightening of his smile, and it made me wonder exactly how rich Bella was
that she could use such thinly disguised blackmail against someone who
obviously played a large part in channel control.
“Bella, your thoughts are pearls to me. Give me some time with them,
I’ll bounce them around. We’ll talk again soon, baby, huh? Real soon.”
And with that he was off, weaving his way through groups of people,
escaping.
“Wow. I don’t think he liked that. Who was he?”
“Howard Welks, top man at the channel. I have to leave. Walk me to the
car, will you?”
“We’re not leaving together?”
“I’m sorry, Jack. Not tonight, my father’s at home.”
“What? He’s visiting or something?”
 “Some nights he spends at the house, some at his apartment downtown.
Tonight he’s at the house.”
“And you can’t bring anyone home? We could go to my place.”
“It’s complicated, Jack.”
At the entrance to the building Bella took a slim mobile from her
handbag and told the limo to come around. It looked very much like I
wasn’t going to lay pipe that night. My disappointment must have shown
because she kissed me and squeezed my arm.
“Are you terribly annoyed?”
“Well, I just thought …”
The limo arrived, The driver stood patiently holding the door open.
Bella glanced at the interior, then at me.
“Come and sit with me for a few minutes.”
We climbed in and the car moved out onto the road. Bella told the
chauffeur to drive down the street a little way and park, then she slid up the
partition. The cabin light threw gold across tan leather and the black glass
windows held infinite concertina reflections of ourselves.
Bella took her jacket and skirt off. I held her tits for a while, and then
she had me suck them. The seat made a soft crunching noise as she lay back
and pulled off her briefs. The seam of her cunt glistened. She ran her hands
over the insides of her thighs, then opened it up.
“Watch.”
She started slowly, drawing her fingers through her labia, making lazy
circles over her clit. My dick was painful against my trousers and I undid
my fly and took it out. Bella’s hand moved faster between her legs. After a
while she arched her back and slid a finger into her asshole. She moaned
and shuddered. Her hand went lazy again, over her belly and breasts. The
muscles in her legs relaxed, she sat up and kissed me.
“Maybe I should kick you out of the car now.”
“You’re kidding.”
She laughed and put her head in my lap. And it was weird. Every
woman sucks in a different way and a lover’s blow job is as distinctive as
her voice or the smell of her hair. Bella hadn’t gone down on me before in
either of our two previous connections, but somehow the movement and the
feel of her mouth were familiar to me. It was a dim recognition, one I
couldn’t link to any particular time or place, but it was there nevertheless.
Right then, though, I had too much input coming from elsewhere to worry
about memories, so I put it down to some sort of sexual déjà vu and
concentrated on stuffing myself into her mouth. When I came she
swallowed some of it and let the rest run down the outside of my cock. I
had to wipe myself with the tail of my shirt.
While her back had been bent I’d seen more clearly the scarab at the
base of her spine.
“I like your tattoo.”
“Oh, that … I had it done with a friend, one of those silly, spur of the
moment things. Pull up your pants, I have to go.”
I stood on the sidewalk. As she pulled away, Bella wound down her
window and called to me:
“What do you think about love, Jack? Do you think it can happen this
quickly?”
Then she was just a pair of taillights getting smaller on a wide city road.
I watched them fade until a gray sedan took the same line and obstructed
my view.
Emmett Terrace. Home. A room hissing with late-night isolation. I ran
gossip on the vid until the examination of better lives than mine became too
much for me and I had to kill the screen. Darkness swallowed the room,
followed a minute later, as my eyes adjusted, by the orange glow that
seeped through the fabric of the blind. It caught the edges of things, made
ochre cross-hatchings of pieces of furniture and the corners of walls. I
drifted, exhausted. Thoughts chased themselves through my head.
Bella’s blow job … Bella’s blow job … The way she took the whole of
my cock and pushed it all the way back so I’d ended up fucking the soft
tissue at the top of her throat. Why was it familiar? As I slipped into
semiconsciousness the feel of my cock in her neck haunted me. I floated
with the sensation, trying to focus on it in the hope of finding some
explanation, but I couldn’t stop other images creeping in—a car door
shutting, flashes of Hollywood through a window, a head of silver hair,
gravel against my cheek … When two tramps made an appearance I came
awake with a start. I knew where the memory of her mouth came from—
Bella’s blow job matched the inexplicable memory of oral sex I’d woken
with in the alley after my abortive attempt to locate Doctor Kidney.
 Bizarre, to say the least. So bizarre, in fact, it made a couple of other
things seem odd. Her tattoo, for instance. Of course, tattooists work from
patterns and in the city there might be hundreds of people sporting the same
design. But it was strange that both my wife and the first nontrade fuck I’d
had after her death should wear identical marks. Then there was the fact
that she’d turned up at my apartment so soon after I’d been drugged and
dumped in the alley …
I caught myself. A day spent hungover was obviously taking its toll. I
was allowing coincidence to become paranoia. And, at what I hoped was
the beginning of a relationship with a woman who could make my life very
much better than it was, I didn’t need to be having that kind of brain
function.
To channel my thoughts in a different direction I pictured how she’d
looked fingering herself in the back of the limo. But that dredged up a wave
of despondency. Maybe it was irrational after only two fuck sessions and a
blow job, but I’d expected to be taken back to her house after the Bradbury
thing. And she’d put me off with some shit about her father.
It didn’t take too many synaptic firings to realize that if I was ever
going to get anything beyond money for a suit I needed to strengthen my
connection with her. That meant I’d have to push myself into her world,
instead of letting her just dip into mine.
I woke thinking about Daryl Hannah, about how her mornings must be.
How she’d lie on a king-size bed in a pure white room the size of a tennis
court with sunlight cutting swaths across the carpet. And just a short
distance beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, a matter of yards perhaps, the
sea would roll under blue sky and fat white clouds. The maid would come
in with a light breakfast of coffee and croissants and the aroma of the
freshly roasted beans and the delicate pastry would mix with the clean salt
air and just that, just those three simple smells and the ocean breeze against
your skin would remind you that you were a god.
I got out of bed, drank a can of Pepsi, and found Ryan’s number in a
dirty pair of jeans that lay with all my other clothes in a greasy pile on the
floor. I hesitated. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, making deliberate contact
with Mr. Frightening. But I wanted my mornings to be like Daryl Hannah’s
and there was no other way to get Bella’s address.
 I arranged a meet for that afternoon. I didn’t say what I wanted. Ryan
sounded smug on the phone, thinking, no doubt, I was ready to spill some
Karen-related info.
At night, darkness and neon dazzle threw a deceitful caul over the drag,
hiding the patina of blood, semen, and shit that layered the sidewalks and
the buildings and glued the whole place together. Daytime, though, it was a
wound laid bare. Drifts of trash sloped against walls like dunes on a beach.
Pools of drying vomit mixed their stink with the acrid burn of piss that
drifted from every ground-level recess and alley entrance. What little
glamour the place managed to disguise itself with through the prime-time
hours was mercilessly stripped away the instant the sun rose.
The whores were thinner on the ground when it was light, but they were
still there—the more determined or the more desperate—hanging out for
the midday trade of office drones who prefered a fast fuck in a wardrobe-
size cubicle to eating salad in the company lunch room.
I had souvlaki and coffee at a counter and watched them parade
listlessly along the street, wondering what type I’d need to hook Ryan. A
simple fuck wouldn’t cut it. He’d get freebies for the asking—flash the
badge and any girl would spread herself open to avoid the hassle of a trip to
the station and a night’s loss of earnings. No, to get Bella’s address out of a
guy who watched girls do it with jackhammers I’d need something more
toxic.
In the months I’d been hanging there I’d come to know things about a
few of the girls—maybe you chat with them over a drink while they’re
between tricks, maybe you overhear gossip, some info you pick up just by
watching what goes down on the street. It isn’t anything self-improving but
it helps pass a slow night.
And that was how I’d heard about Rosie. She was a brunette in her
forties who worked more for pleasure than for business—she got off having
guys shit in her mouth. Rumor was she had a husband and a couple of kids
somewhere, but she spent so much time on the drag, day and night, I didn’t
think it was true.
I found her in her usual spot, standing in the doorway of an abandoned
corsetry store in a cross-street twenty yards back from the drag, like her
noneconomic motivation segregated her from the rest of the whores. She
wore a black latex minidress and her body looked soft and a little
overweight. I’d pawned the suit Bella had paid for, and with the rest of my
money I had about three hundred bucks. I knew it was going to take most of
it to get her to trek over to Santa Monica with me, but that was the way it
had to be. Her mouth had some sort of nervous tic that made her lips pull
back from her teeth when she spoke.
“So who’s the john?”
“A guy.”
“Yeah, but he does what?”
“Does it matter? I’m paying.”
“Sure it matters. I’ll do it whatever, but it can make a difference. For
instance, lifestyle is very important. A man who spends all day sitting on
his behind eating refined foods, chances are his output will be less than
spectacular. Believe me, I’ve learned the importance of fiber. Doughnuts for
breakfast, burrito for lunch, fried chicken for dinner, you’re going to get a
six-inch turd if you’re lucky. Skinny, too. Someone who eats muesli and
exercises, well, that’s a different story. They’re going to lay eighteen inches
of healthy shit, minimum.”
“Size is important?”
“It feels heavier. But it’s a trade-off too, because shit from an out-of-
condition colon smells more powerfully. Given the choice, though, nine
times out of ten I’ll go for size. Maybe seven times out of ten.”
“Don’t worry, this guy’s full of shit.”
“That’s a joke, right?”
We purred down Santa Monica Boulevard in the Prelude.
Ryan had parked in front of the Senior Citizens Center and was sitting on a
bench under a palm. There wasn’t a homeless person within thirty yards. I
guess one of them must have fucked with him and got burned. I left Rosie
in the car and went and sat next to him.
“Jackie, how nice to see you. Tell me about the limo outside the
Bradbury Building.”
“The Bradbury Building?”
“From where I was it looked like the same bim you had over at your
place.”
 I remembered the gray sedan that had blocked my view after Bella
pulled away.
“I’ll trade you the limo story for an address.”
“Jackie, I don’t know if our relationship has reached the trading stage.
What address?”
“The woman at my place, the woman at the Bradbury Building. She
forgot to pay me.”
Ryan laughed.
“I saw she left you on the sidewalk. What happened? Couldn’t
perform?”
“The address? You got it through DMV, remember?”
“Oh, I got it through more than that. Give with the story first.”
I didn’t want to give him anything without a guaranteed return, but
Ryan had the upper hand and there wasn’t much else I could do.
“She called me up and invited me to a party.”
“Sounds like she’s getting serious.”
“She needed an escort, that’s all.”
“What about those fifteen minutes in the back of the limo?”
“You were counting?”
“I was imagining what kind of technique she was using on your meat.”
“Jesus …”
“For her address I want details, like it was one of those phone sex
things.”
“You know what I was doing, you know I didn’t go home with her.
That’s enough. See that woman in my car? She’s paid for, and she isn’t your
usual hooker.”
“I can see that. How old is she?”
“She comes when you shit in her mouth.”
Ryan reached a heart pill out of his pocket.
“You’re quick, Jackie, but then I never figured you for dumb. Where are
we supposed to do it?”
“I’ll spring for a room.”
“Get me in the mood. Tell me how it happened in the back of the limo.”
“Shit, Ryan, she’ll tell me where she lives pretty soon anyway.”
“But you can’t wait.”
“You’ll give me the address if I do?”
 “Word of honor.”
So I told it like it was something out of a porn rag. Details like the trace
of shit I noticed when Bella pulled her finger out of her ass, like the gulping
sound she made when I came in her mouth. When I finished, Ryan stood up
abruptly and started for his car.
“Let’s go. Don’t bother getting her out, just follow me. You know the
Starway on Wilshire?”
“Give me Bella’s address and take her with you. I’ll give you the money
for the room.”
“Oh, no, Jackie, you have to come too.”
The Starway Motel was a dump that stood across from a shoe retailer on the
eastern boarder of Santa Monica. It was the kind of place where ten-year-
old Trans Ams and Camaros pulled up late at night then disappeared before
dawn without the owners ever being seen. The rooms invited invasion—the
windows didn’t shut properly, the doors didn’t latch. Inside, the carpet was
greasy and the sheets were stained. But it was cheap, and if the other guests
weren’t actively trying to rip you off they pretty much minded their own
business.
Rosie took an eight-foot square of plastic sheeting from her bag and
spread it out in the middle of the room. I climbed onto the bed and sat with
my back in a corner. I was pissed off. I wanted Bella’s address safe in my
hand, I wanted to be out, heading toward it. Instead I was stuck here,
hanging on Ryan’s string, not knowing if he intended to make good on his
promise or not.
“This’ll be an experience for both of us, Jackie.” Ryan glanced at Rosie
and shook his head. “Jesus … What happens to some people?”
“You’re the one who’s going to give it to her.”
“It’s an opportunity. Who wouldn’t?”
“Most people.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes. He had small feet.
He laughed.
“You wouldn’t take it if it was offered?”
“Doesn’t do it for me.”
“Probably ain’t extreme enough.”
“Yeah, right.”
 Ryan was down to his shorts. He picked up his jacket, took an envelope
from it, and spun it into my lap.
“Brought you another present.”
I looked inside—several glossies.
“Have a look. I won’t think any the worse of you.”
I dropped the envelope on the bed. Ryan made a disappointed face.
Over on the floor a naked Rosie was flat on her back, legs spread, talking to
herself. The plastic crinkled beneath her. Ryan winked at me and moved
toward her.
“Time to get on.”
From behind he looked like some huge slug heading for food. He didn’t
have a waist, the fat on his guts filled up what hollows there should have
been, and the cheeks of his ass were so full his crack was just a tight
vertical line running between his legs to the small of his back.
He stood in front of Rosie for a while and stuck his toe into her cunt.
She ground herself against it. Then he got down on hands and knees and
crawled up her until his hard-on was in her mouth. He pushed it in as far as
he could. She took it until she was about to heave, then told him to turn
around. The cheeks of his ass stayed together even in this position and she
had to use her hands to pull them apart. When she saw his hole she groaned
and put her nose against it. Her tits rose and her eyelids fluttered like she
was getting a rush.
“Squat over me, baby.”
Rosie’s bent legs trembled. Ryan looked like a small Sumo wrestler,
hunkered down over her head, arms braced against his knees. His dick
looked ugly and dark against the white skin of his belly. Rosie pressed her
mouth home. I watched the sides of her mouth roll as she worked her
tongue, but it went on too long to hold my attention so I took the photos out
of the envelope and looked through them.
Five shots of two bodies, different angles. A guy on his back, a woman
slumped on top, his bone curving into her cunt. Both of them locked
together in rigor. Some hotel room, cheap prints on the walls, pieces of
plaster missing. Their heads were covered with plastic convenience-store
bags, cinched tight with silver duct tape at the neck. I could see the logo for
a liquor company on the one the woman was wearing.
 Wild. Real dead people having sex. An image so shocking that for a
moment I couldn’t make sense of the pictures, couldn’t arrange the
collection of limbs and asses into two joined people. When I did I got hard,
so I put them away for later.
Rosie was murmuring up at Ryan.
“Are you ready, baby? Can you do it now? Squeeze it out of that big ass
of yours. C’mon, baby, c’mon.”
Ryan concentrated and there was a moment of complete stillness, his
face turned red, Rosie lay motionless with her mouth open. Then he grunted
and a flood of liquid shit slopped out of his ass, filling her mouth and
covering her face in a lumpy brown sheet, like it had been tipped out of a
bucket.
She coughed and swallowed and coughed again, blowing shit out of her
nose, wiping it from her eyes. Her tongue circled her mouth once, trying to
lick more of the stuff in. Then she twisted her head away and puked. But
Ryan wasn’t finished yet. After a couple of stuttering farts something more
solid emerged, a short thin turd that dropped out of him and lay across her
ear and the side of her throat like a dead snake. She took hold of it and
pressed it into the space between her breasts. Ryan smirked at me, then
rolled her over and butt-fucked her. He could have done anything he
wanted, Rosie was off in some shit-heaven dreamland.
Ryan took a shower and dressed. I opened a window and sat counting the
minutes until I could get away. The smell in the room was appalling. Rosie
lay on her plastic, her head in a pool of shit. She had her eyes closed and
she made noises like a baby sleeping.
“Looks like she enjoyed it.” Ryan tightened his tie. “Fucking nitro,
haven’t had a solid shit for five years. You think Miss Vernier is into this
kind of thing?”
“Who?”
“Your piece with the limo.”
Ryan took out a small notebook, tore off a page, and handed it to me.
“The address DMV gave me, same as where the limo went.”
“You followed her home?”
“I’m interested in the company you keep. Dress smart, she’s big
money.”
 Ryan and I left Rosie fugued out on the floor and headed back into the
world. Late afternoon, the sky was clear and there was a nice breeze coming
up from the ocean. Traffic was starting to pick up along the boulevard.
“You want to grab a coffee, Jack?”
“No.”
“She forgot to pay you, huh?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Sure.”
“Maybe I just like her.”
Ryan laughed.
“Don’t get those photos too sticky.”
Then he got in his car and drove away.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Nineteen
On the flats of Beverly Hills they go out of their way to flaunt their wealth.
In Malibu they do their best to hide it. Up in the hills, anyway, where the
really big money settles itself. More space, better views, enforceable
seclusion. The roads are narrow and winding and they don’t have
sidewalks. The only things that show people live there at all are the
occasional driveways disappearing between screens of vegetation.
Access to the address Ryan had given me was blocked by a pair of black
iron gates ten feet high, set into a solid stone wall. Through them I could
see redwoods and pines and a lot of other European-looking trees. I parked
on a grass verge and thought. How to explain knowing her address? I
couldn’t tell her I got it from a cop. So I generated some bullshit about
knowing a guy in the DMV, which was kind of related to the truth, and
when I had it straight in my head I got out of the car and pressed the
intercom by the gate. No one answered, but there must have been a camera
somewhere because after a while the gates swung open. I drove through and
along an avenue of trees that opened out, about a quarter of a mile later, into
an area of gently rising wild grass surrounded by woodland. I’d expected
something more formal, more landscaped and designed, but it looked like
Bella’s ideas on gardening were strictly low-maintenance.
The house, at the top of the rise, was large, but not obscene. Old stone,
slate roof, leaded windows—more New England than Malibu. I rang the
house bell and looked back the way I’d come. I could see a slice of ocean
above the trees.
Bella answered the door herself and she didn’t seem pissed off to see
me—the opposite, in fact. I got ready with my story, but I didn’t need it.
“I thought that must have been you last night. The driver noticed your
headlights.”
For a moment I was thrown. Then it clicked, she’d mistaken Ryan’s tail
for me.
“I don’t like sleeping by myself.”
She reached out and ran her fingers through my hair.
 “Come inside.”
The interior of the house wasn’t anywhere near as gothic as the outside.
Instead of antiques and shadows, the decor was contemporary and there was
a feeling of light and space that could only have come from an extensive
remodeling of the original layout.
Bella led me up a flight of stairs and along a corridor to a suite of rooms
—bedroom, bathroom, a dressing room, and another room with the door
closed. The windows of the bedroom were on a corner of the building and
overlooked a large rectangular pool on one side and an area of grass and
forest on the other.
“Nice house.”
“I like the seclusion. One of the advantages of wealth is the distance it
can buy you from other people.”
“One among many.”
She undid my fly. I came out hard in her hand and we fucked a solid
hour. By the end of it I was sore and she was smeared with come and glit.
While she took a shower I wandered through the suite. The style of the
rooms was deco minimalist—smooth unornamented surfaces, furniture with
clean lines, nothing unnecessary. In a wardrobe that formed one wall of her
dressing room I found her clothes. They hung with department-store
precision—a lot of short-skirted suits, dark colors, no patterns, cut from the
best fabrics in the world. On the rack they looked almost conservative, but I
knew how Bella’s body transformed them. The recessed dressing table in
the opposite wall was bare of cosmetics or jewelry except for a platinum
compact and an eye pencil.
I ran my hands over things, over polished hardwood and flawless
joinery, over materials and furnishings the rest of the planet could never
dream of owning. I breathed in the smell of money.
The closed door off the bedroom opened onto a small room without
windows that held video equipment—a couple of semi-professional
cameras on tripods, a two-tape VHS editing desk, three monitors in a row
above it.
I was looking at the controls of the editing machine when Bella walked
up behind me and touched my shoulder.
“Do you know anything about them? Or are you only interested in the
end product? What you see on the screen?”
 She was wrapped in a towel and there was still moisture in the hollow
of her neck.
“I’m interested in the life around it.”
“I spoke to Welks this morning. You should call him, he’s warming to
the idea of another presenter.”
“You pressured him.”
“I’m a stockholder, I’m entitled to make suggestions. Did you enjoy
mixing with those pigs last night? Is that really the life you want?”
“It’d be better than the one I’ve got now.”
She kissed me and smiled, and it was a smile that unnerved me. Not
passion or compassion or pity or love … but satisfaction.
“Go and clean up, Jack, we’re having dinner soon. There’s someone I
think you’ll find it interesting to meet.”
The dining room was on the ground floor. Bella held my arm as we went
down the stairs. I expected to hear the bustle of cooks and maids, but the
house was quiet.
“Are you good at surprises?”
“Sure.”
“I hope so.”
She pushed a door open and we walked into some sort of predining
area, a room with couches and a bar—a place for cocktails. A man stood at
a window, looking out at the grounds. His back was toward us but he turned
as we entered. And in that two-second movement I understood what Bella
meant about surprises.
“Jack, I’d like you to meet my father, Powell Vernier.”
There was laughter in her voice, like she was enjoying a joke. But it was
lost on me. I was too busy trying to deal with the implications of what I was
seeing. The man in front of me had silver hair. He’d picked me up in a
Jaguar on the drag, and later he’d dumped me in an alley. And his presence
here moved the thoughts I’d had the night before, about Bella’s blow job
and tattoo, from bleary late-night brainshit to something with a much more
definite connection to reality.
Powell ignored me and looked hard at Bella.
“Is this wise?”
“Whether it is or not, he’s here.”
 “You invited him?”
“Shall we go through?”
Powell snorted and turned away from her abruptly. He stalked through a
pair of open sliding doors that connected with the dining room proper. Bella
and I followed.
The table was laid with crystal and silver, pale roses were arranged in
the center. On a counter under a row of windows, covered metal dishes
rested on warming plates. I thought someone might appear to serve us, but
Bella and Powell moved to the food and helped themselves. Bella caught
my look.
“I don’t like other people in the house.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“We have cleaners and a cook, even a chauffeur. But none of them lives
on the property. And when they are here I don’t allow them to show
themselves.”
We ate in silence for a while. Bella shot glances at me like she was
waiting for something to happen. Powell pretended I wasn’t in the room. I
just sat there and wondered what the fuck was going on.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?”
Bella had stopped eating and was looking at me incredulously. “About
what?”
“About Powell.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure …”
“If I was part of it? I am. What do you think of our … social
conscience?”
“I don’t have much to go on, do I?”
“I’m sorry about the spray but it’s a necessary security measure.
Gratitude can turn to greed so easily. And we didn’t treat you because it
wouldn’t have been ethical working on someone I was interested in.
Besides, you aren’t homeless.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“Powell has more experience.”
“Why didn’t you just let me wake up and send me home?”
“I wasn’t sure I knew you well enough. I didn’t know how you’d react.”
Powell looked up from his plate.
“You know him well enough now?”
 He’d cut the food on his plate into small pieces, but he hadn’t eaten
more than a couple of mouthfuls. I checked his eyes and realized why
they’d seemed so unresponsive when I saw him on the drag—they were
pinned. The guy was smacked. Bella ignored him.
“We’re somewhat jealous of our privacy.”
“Leaving me in an alley was the only alternative?”
“An alley?”
“I woke up with a couple of tramps trying to take my pants off.”
Powell chuckled softly. Bella turned on him.
“I told you to be careful with him.”
“What would you have done?”
“I certainly would not have left him in an alley.” Then, to me,
“Whereabouts?”
“Hollywood.”
“Hollywood! For Christ’s sake, Powell, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking about our security.”
“Are you sure?”
“Meaning?”
There was a calculated blandness to Powell’s expression that made me
feel I’d missed something. Bella changed the subject.
“Would you call us philanthropic, Jack?”
“There really is a free healthcare thing?”
“Of course. It isn’t anything particularly exhaustive—a checkup, some
medication, some money—but I think it makes a difference.”
“I thought you didn’t like people.”
Powell made a short barking noise which I guessed was laughter. Bella
looked viciously at him.
“Certain people. The people we help have so little impact on the world
it isn’t worth judging them.”
“As you see, my daughter is completely selfless.”
Bella gave him a false smile.
“But you give so much to the project, Father, don’t you do it out of a
sense of selflessness too?”
“You know why I do it.”
“Yes, I do.” The bitterness in Bella’s voice was unmistakable. She
caught herself and looked apologetically at me.
 “You’ll have to excuse us, we’ve been working very hard.”
Later. Upstairs in her bed. She fucked madly, clawing at my skin, sweating
into my eyes. It felt like something was trying to fight its way out of her
body and fuse with my heart.
In the dark, afterwards, I smoked and stared at the slug-trails of my
come caught in the moonlight on her legs.
“Why did Powell act like a messenger boy when he picked me up? He
didn’t say anything about being a doctor.”
“He thinks it separates him from what we do. A precaution in case
anyone recognizes him.”
“He doesn’t like me.”
“He hates you. He’s hated every lover I’ve ever had.”
“Have there been many?”
“Would it worry you?”
“I’m just wondering how long I’ll last.”
“You’ll last as long as you want.”
“It’s my choice?”
“Everything is your choice. It’s the same for all of us. Self-
determination—it’s what makes us human.”
“If you’ve got enough money.”
“If you’ve got the strength to decide what you really want and then to
act on that desire and make it a reality.”
“Sounds simple.”
“Only the weak allow themselves to be thwarted, Jack.”
“What did you mean outside the Bradbury building, when you asked me
about love?”
“I was asking you to make a choice.”
“About us?”
“About what you want for yourself. I can offer you everything you
dream of. But there are things about me you might find unusual.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, one step at a time, I think.”
Bella smiled and swung her legs out of the bed.
“I have to confess something, Jack. I’ve been less than frank with you.”
“What about?”
 I held my breath, wondering if she was going to make some kidney
revelation.
“How I found you after the party in Bel Air.”
“You spoke to my trick.”
“I don’t think he was in a mood to do you any favors.”
“Yeah. How, then?”
“When Powell picked you up you had a card in your wallet—your
escort service.”
“Oh.”
“Do you remember anything from that night?”
“Between getting sprayed and waking up? No.”
“Nothing?”
“Well …”
“Come with me.”
In the video suite she pressed part of the wall, it slid back to reveal a
shelf of video cassettes. She took one, slotted it into the editing machine,
and fired it up. I saw myself unconscious on a gurney. Clinical surroundings
—green walls, green surgical fabric. My pants were around my knees and
Bella had my dick in her mouth. When I came she let it spurt over her lips.
She killed the tape.
“The drug we use allows certain physical responses. That’s one of
them.”
“I thought it was a dream.”
“Does it bother you?”
“Why would it?”
“Taking advantage of an unconscious person might be considered an
abuse of power.”
“But only the weak allow themselves to be thwarted, right?”
She laughed.
“It wasn’t an opportunity I could pass up.”
She led me back into the bedroom and began brushing her hair.
“What are you doing?”
“I have work to take care of.”
“What work? It’s almost twelve.”
“Some results I need to check before tomorrow. I’ll be gone a few
hours, don’t wait up.”
 She showered quickly and left the suite.
It wasn’t what I’d expected on my first night in her house, but then she
hadn’t known I was coming. I lit a cigarette and lay in the dark thinking.
Both Bella and Powell were involved in the homeless medical care
thing. Neither of them had said anything about kidneys, but if the
operations were for real it seemed a fair guess that they would both be
involved in those too.
A doctor who took out kidneys and who was also one of the clients
Karen spent extended time with …
Joey had said he’d been examined by a woman, but after the anesthetic
came down he wouldn’t have known who did the actual cutting—Powell’s
messenger-boy act would have fooled him the same as it did me. So who
had Karen been fucking? Powell? Certainly his age and general creepiness
wouldn’t have stopped her if there was money to be had. But then I couldn’t
rule out Bella either—she didn’t strike me as a woman who placed limits on
her sexual menu. And to Karen, cock and cunt were all the same as long as
they were equally financed.
What clinched it for me was the tattoo. Karen’s had first appeared when
she came home from some stay-over fuck job. Bella said she’d had hers
done with a friend. Identical designs. It had to be more than coincidence.
And you don’t go out with someone and get the exact same picture unless
you have a pretty strong attachment to them.
If that made Bella the sex partner, did it also mean she was involved in
the killing? Lovers waste each other all the time, but I couldn’t see what
reason Bella would have for murdering Karen. She’d already got her
kidney, after all. And even if Karen came back and started hassling her
about the operation, maybe trying to blackmail extra cash, one glance was
all it would have taken to know there was no way she’d make good on any
threat of going to the police—she just wasn’t that kind of person. Still, there
could be a whole load of shit I didn’t know anything about.
In the absence of knowing any of that shit, however, two things made
Powell a better bet as killer. He could produce spunk and, for some reason,
he hated Bella’s lovers. Which meant the jism they found in Karen’s guts
could have been his, and that maybe he had a motive for the killing.
Of course it could have been a double act—daddy and daughter
cooperating in an operation that went a bit too far—but from the vibe
between them I didn’t think that was likely. There was too much
antagonism there, too much vicious jousting to figure cooperation was a
word they used very often.
I ran my head in circles for an hour trying to figure it out, but I didn’t
have enough info to feel conclusive about anything. All I got was a panic
attack over the thought that, if Bella did turn out to be the killer, things
might go terribly wrong before I had a chance to benefit from my
association with her.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Twenty
Morning light woke me. The windows were open and let in a breeze that
carried a taste of the sea. Bella stood next to the bed, she was fully dressed
and looked too fresh to have spent all night working.
“I was hoping you’d wake up before I left.”
“Where are you going?”
“I own a clinic in Brentwood.”
“The place Powell took me?”
“No. This one is more orthodox.”
“You work full-time?”
“Just the odd day here and there. It keeps me current.”
“Even though you don’t have to?”
“It has its compensations.” Bella smiled suggestively. “Will you stay
here until I get back?”
“Sure. Can I use the pool?”
“Of course. And call Welks.”
She handed me a business card.
“What time did you come to bed?”
“Late.”
An hour or so later I dragged my ass out of bed, had a shower and wandered
through the ground floor until I found a room with open French windows
and a table laid with breakfast. Cereal, fruit, pastries, and coffee for one.
The trappings of wealth around me made me feel a little slovenly at being
the last to rise.
I ate the pastries and drank the coffee and smoked a couple of
cigarettes. There was no TV in the room and after a while I got bored, so I
took the French windows and went out to look at the grounds. I was at one
side of the house and the garden there was just fifty yards of deep grass
bordered by woodland. Thick ferns grew at the edge of the trees. I kicked
my way into them, wondering if Arnold Schwarzenegger’s estate was
anything like this. I’d seen Leibovitz’s photos of him on a white horse and
had always figured his home life must be set against some transplanted
Bavarian forest.
The sun had burned the dew off the tops of the ferns, but underneath
they were shaded and my shoes came away wet as I shuffled through them.
It was a childish thing to do, like running through autumn leaves, but who
was there to see me? I hadn’t seen one servant yet, and Powell was
probably occupied mixing up his morning shot. Besides, I liked the sound it
made.
And then my right foot got stuck in a dead dog.
I dragged it out onto an open patch of lawn and twisted my shoe clear of
the soggy mess of flesh and bone that had been its rib cage. Once, when I
was a kid, I found the carcass of a drowned dog floating in a creek.
Someone had gotten to it before me and jammed a piece of wood up its ass
and the skin there was torn and fluttered in the current like tissue paper. It
had given me a hard-on because I knew whoever had done it must have
been turned on too. But this dog looked different. It looked like it had died
in pain. The skin of its muzzle was desiccated and drawn back and its eyes
had been eaten out. It must have been in the undergrowth some time.
The animal corpse worried me. There were feral dogs in the hills all
around L.A. and one of them could easily have picked this place to jump off
from for doggie heaven. But I didn’t think that was the case here. This dog
was a domestic animal and it hadn’t chosen anything. Someone had cut it
open from groin to chest and pulled its guts out into the air.
I kicked it back into the brush and walked round to the back of the
house. Powell was on the far side of the pool, dressed in a dark,
conservatively cut suit, staring at some clouds moving across the sky. I
called out good morning, but he didn’t respond, just fish-eyed me for a few
seconds then turned his head back to the sky. I couldn’t be bothered with
that kind of shit so early in the morning so I sat in a chair near one of the
pillars that ringed the pool, pointed myself toward the sun, and closed my
eyes.
A couple of minutes later a shadow fell across me. Powell, of course,
standing there like he was contemplating sticking something sharp into me.
“Come with me, I want to show you something.”
In some room on the ground floor, sitting on opposite sides of a low table, a
photo album between us, closed.
Powell touched the book like it was a treasure he took pride in owning.
He had long slim fingers.
“You expect your relationship with Bella to last?”
“Why shouldn’t it?”
“Look at these.”
He opened the album and turned pages, holding them so I could see.
The pictures were all of Bella. They started off with a run of mid-teen shots.
She wore tight jeans and bathing suits. They weren’t the type of photos
you’d expect a father to take of his daughter. Some things were too obvious
—young labia separated by a crotch seam, bending rear shots, a hint of
pubic hair around a bikini, nipples visible through a thin T-shirt. But Bella
seemed natural enough, as though she were unaware of the focus of the
camera.
In the next set she was a few years older, naked and posed—a series of
glamour-mag copyings in which she either flaunted her body with full-
frontal pride, or looked bored.
“I took them all myself. Look further.”
He pushed the book across the table to me and I flipped pages into porn
territory—legs spread, cunt held open, ass exposed, fingers and other
objects inside both holes. From her early twenties to the present. And in all
of them Bella looked like she was brandishing a weapon, controlling
whatever dynamic existed between her and Powell when the camera came
out.
Powell took the book back and closed it.
“Do they shock you?”
“Nothing there I haven’t already seen.”
His jaw muscles tightened.
“But you find it strange, do you not, that I should take such pictures?”
“I wouldn’t call it exactly normal.”
“Bella was a willing participant in all but the earliest of them. This
estate, my friend, is not the place to look for normality. It is a world within
a world, a private universe, and in it we have lived lives outside the rules
that govern yours. If you think Bella is just another woman to bed, someone
who behaves in an essentially similar manner to the trash you are used to,
then you are very much mistaken.”
“You’re trying to frighten me, right?”
“It will be interesting to see how long you maintain that bravado.”
Powell stood. “I am going to the city. Shall I leave the photographs with
you?”
I looked up at him, at the poisoned hardness of his junked eyes, and I
knew Bella had been right when she said he hated me.
After he’d gone I pulled Howard Welks’s card out and found a phone. But I
hesitated—the thought of calling the boss of a TV station for a job made me
nervous. I punched Rex’s number instead.
“Guess where I’m calling from.”
“Who’s this?”
“Jack.”
“Oh.”
Rex sounded like there was nothing left inside him. He also sounded
more than a little stoned.
“I’m in Malibu, man. At that woman’s house. Jesus, you should see the
place.”
“What woman?”
“The one I got dumped out of the agency for. I tracked her down.”
“Jack, is this, like, a joke?”
“A joke? Shit no, it’s real. What do you mean?”
“You don’t think it’s kind of inappropriate, considering the situation.”
“Fuck, man, it was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I still killed him.”
“Yeah, I know. And no one’s saying it wasn’t an awful thing to have
happened. To you and to him.”
“But I bet you don’t think about it much.”
“What do you want me to say, for Christsake? I’m not going to make it
the central fact of my life.”
“Well, it’s the central fucking fact of mine.”
“Maybe you should talk about it with your doctor. You know, get some
counseling.”
“That won’t bring him back to fucking life, will it?”
 “What are you going to do, then? I mean, it sounds like you need to do
something, man.”
“You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to have another hit, then
I’m going to take a page out of your book, Jack. I’m just going to pretend it
never fucking happened. How’s that?”
He broke the connection before I could think of a comeback.
The next phone call I made went a little better.
Howard Welks was in a meeting, but he’d left word with his secretary
and she routed the call through to some guy named Larry Burns who turned
out to be head of production. Burns wasn’t overjoyed about having to make
space for a new presenter, particularly one with zero experience, and he
worked hard at finding a reason to kill things before they got started. But
I’d been following the lives of the stars too long to fuck up on any of his
questions, and in the end he told me to come in the next day for a dry run in
front of the camera.
When I put the phone down my hand was shaking. Two months ago I’d
been struggling to make ends meet serving dough-nuts to truck drivers and
process workers. Now I had a chance at what everyone in L.A. wanted—
visual exposure. A chance to become someone other people wanted to be.
I knew it had nothing to do with me. If I made it onto TV it would be
due to Bella’s financial power and nothing else. But what did I care? As
long as I got a fast car, a place in the hills, and my picture on the pages of
magazines, nothing else mattered. Even so, the thought of walking into a
studio full of technicians and cameramen made me feel distinctly edgy.
But then, that’s what drugs are for.
I swam nude in the pool, then lay with my back against one of the columns
and caught some sun. The clouds Powell had been staring at earlier had
disappeared and the sky was the kind of blue Californian license plates used
to be. Above the trees the slash of visible ocean glittered distantly.
Later I got dressed and went around the front of the house to the
Prelude. The last set of photos Ryan had given me was still in the glove
compartment. I took them upstairs to Bella’s suite and sat on the bed and
looked at them—plastic-bag lovers, dead rubber bodies joined by a dick.
After a while I went into the bathroom and had a wank over the sink.
 I spent the rest of the day in front of a TV smoking and catching up on
current affairs.
After surviving surgery to remove a brain tumor, Elizabeth Taylor was
now facing diabetes. Leonardo DiCaprio had been snapped eating organic
popcorn during breaks from work on Titanic and, on the set of Michael,
Nicolas Cage helped with a birthday surprise for John Travolta. Later, John
dropped four-point-seven big ones on a mansion and twenty-five K on a
party where he celebrated with Tom Hanks, Sean Penn, Sharon Stone,
Priscilla Presley, and Dustin Hoffman.
Bella came home around five. We fucked and had dinner and sat out by the
pool.
“Powell and I had a chat this morning after you’d gone.”
“That must have been edifying.”
“He showed me some photos.”
Bella sighed.
“His private collection, I suppose.”
“I imagine.”
“What did you think?”
“Sexy.”
“You know why he showed them to you, don’t you?”
“I guess he thought it’d put me off.”
“He’s a consummate bastard.”
“You mind that I’ve seen them?”
“I mind the way they were shown to you.”
In the twilight the water in the pool looked beautiful.
“Feel like a swim?”
Bella shook her head and held her hand out to me.
“Come on. This can’t happen again.”
Up in the video room we sat in black leather chairs. Bella selected a tape
from the hidden cupboard and fizzed a monitor into life. A succession of
clips, all of them looking like they’d been shot in the house. Bella and
Powell fucking, a variety of positions, most of them extreme. Nothing
tender—not rape, but definitely not love—more like combat.
“What do you think?”
 “He’s got a big dick.”
“Jesus, Jack, these are now. It’s still happening. I wasn’t working last
night, I was fucking him.”
“Oh …”
“I’ve been doing it since I was sixteen.”
“He forced you?”
Bella’s smile made me feel naïve.
“He didn’t have to. My mother was killed in a car accident when I was
fifteen. Powell was driving. He was drugged, as usual, and he ran into the
side of a truck—he might as well have murdered her. The opportunity for
revenge was too good to pass up.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’d let him do it, then deny him for weeks, sometimes months. It drove
him out of his mind. And once I’d had a taste of that kind of power I wasn’t
about to give it up. He was powerless against me. He couldn’t even threaten
me financially because my mother had been the one with money and had
left most of it to me. On top of that, it was a thrill.”
“It turned you on?”
“Not the way you mean. But testing how far I can go has always excited
me.”
“What about now? It can’t still be a thrill.”
“Manipulating another person is addictive.”
“But it’s been going on what, fifteen years?”
“On and off. But you’re right, control for control’s sake is ultimately
pointless.”
“Then why?”
The tape had been silently humping away through all of this. Bella
killed it, took it out of the machine, and put it back in the cupboard. When
she sat down again she looked pensive.
“This conversation is happening sooner than I’d planned. Please
promise me you won’t let it change things between us.”
“How bad can it be?”
“Not bad, just … unusual. You might see me in a different light.”
“I doubt it.”
Bella read my face, evidently found what she wanted, and went on in a
rush.
 “I opened the Brentwood clinic shortly after I qualified. At first it was
just somewhere to pass time. But it didn’t stay that way. I became
fascinated by what I could do to the patients. Given the right type of person
and the right lies, they’d agree to anything. It began with examinations—
unnecessary rectal probes, vaginal swabs, colonoscopies … But, eventually,
nothing is ever enough and I moved on to minor surgical procedures—small
operations I had no medical reason to perform. Or qualification. I’m not a
surgeon.”
“How did you know how to do them, then?”
“At that level it’s only really a question of mechanics. Once you know
the layout of the body and the basic procedures it isn’t too hard. And I
enjoyed the challenge of working things out.”
“And it was sexual for you?”
“Of course. Sex is just one body doing something to another. Most
people limit themselves to what they believe is normal. I have a broader
definition of the word, that’s all.”
“Was Powell involved in the clinic?”
“No. Our medical partnership came later, when I realized I was risking
exposure. A clinic is never free of scrutiny from one board or another and it
was only a matter of time before someone made a complaint. If I was going
to continue to indulge myself I had to move out of the public arena.”
“That’s what the homeless thing is about? A safe way for you to get
off?”
“I do also provide a valuable service.”
“But essentially …”
“Essentially, yes, it’s for my own pleasure.”
“What does ‘minor surgical procedures’ cover?”
“Vasectomies, mole removal, an appendix occasionally. Often I don’t go
beyond the examination stage. But for all of it I need to maintain my
influence over Powell. I need the technical assistance he can give—he is a
surgeon—and I need him to find the patients in the first place. He’d never
do it otherwise.”
“So you’re going to keep having sex with him?”
“For the time being. But nothing lasts forever. You can handle it, can’t
you, Jack?”
She said this as though she were already sure of it.
 “I can handle pretty much anything.”
“Thank you. You should come and watch me with a patient one night,
you’d enjoy it. We have a one-way mirror setup. They do the most absurd
things for money. Sometimes I think the essence of human nature is
venality.”
“Whose idea was it to tape the sessions with Daddy?”
“Mine, of course. But he sneaks in here and takes a copy of everything I
have. He’s duplicated my entire collection. I suppose it makes him feel as
though he can see into a part of me.”

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Twenty-One
I drove the 850ci. Bella sat in the passenger seat wearing a short iridescent
spandex dress she’d picked up at some late-opening store at the Wilshire
end of Third Street Promenade. It wasn’t particularly slutty, but at least it
cost less than five hundred bucks. She wanted to get into a group sex thing
and we were out trawling for a victim.
It was too early for the drag to yield much—only about eight P.M.—so
we parked and hit a triple-X store on the outskirts. Inside—a few guys
checking cassette covers with tunnel-vision intensity, avoiding any sort of
contact with each other. Bella stood next to one of them—skinny, mid-
forties, eyes tight in his head, the need for a fuck like a smell around him.
She reached down a tape and lingered over the come shot on the front. The
guy noticed her and I guess he thought it was pretty weird, a woman in that
sort of place. When she touched his elbow he almost ran for the door. But
Bella smiled and talked fast and nodded at me. He didn’t need much
persuading.
The three of us took a cab to some shitty motel on the strip. His name
was Rudy and he whined on about how his wife hadn’t let him fuck her
since a year ago when they had a kid. He was a weak, greasy man who
looked like he ought to be wearing a raincoat. We got a ground floor room
at the rear of the block. I pulled the curtains but they didn’t fit too well and I
was worried about the parking lot being right outside. No one else gave a
shit, though, so I figured the best thing to do was get on with it—get Bella
satisfied as fast as possible and get back to Malibu.
We left the lights on and stripped down. The guy had a hard-on before
he got his pants off. He lay where Bella told him to, on his back on the bed,
dick sticking up dark and painful. Bella said she needed a piss first and
went into the bathroom, but she didn’t close the door completely and
through the crack I saw her loading a syringe from a clear glass vial with
blue writing on it. She hid it in a towel which she dropped on the floor
beside the bed just before she climbed on top of Rudy and stuck his dick in.
When Bella was set I got behind her, greased up, and worked my way into
her ass. Over her shoulder I could see Rudy’s face moving through
expressions of rapture—this kind of scene must have fritzed his head every
night as he jerked off in front of the mirror. I could feel his cock moving on
the other side of her colon wall.
Bella ground away for a while, dangling her tits in his face, then lay
right down on top of him like she wanted to snuggle her face into the
hollow of his shoulder. But I saw her hand reach for the syringe, and while
the poor bastard had his eyes closed she stuck it into a vein in his neck.
Rudy yelped, but that’s all he had time for. The drug wasn’t tardy. His
eyes rolled back and his face seized. Best of all, as far as Bella was
concerned, he went into a rapid series of convulsions. I was a little freaked
and my dick started to shrink, so I pretended I’d finished and pulled out. I
watched Bella shake her head and yell as he pistoned away at her cunt. She
came with a scream and swung herself off him. As his dick slid free it
started to spurt, I couldn’t believe the amount he got rid of.
His jerks got slower but more pronounced, muscles locking harder each
time, taking longer to relax for the next spasm. Until his body froze into a
curve, supported only by his shoulders and heels. He looked as though he’d
been electrocuted. His dick was still hard and there were sheets of come
over his belly and the tops of his thighs. Bella was absently wiping herself
with the towel.
“I think he’s stopped breathing.”
She cursed lightly, like this was only a minor inconvenience, and
pushed down on his stomach to straighten him out. She put her mouth on
his and gave him a couple of blasts. The sound of air going into his chest
was hollow and sad.
“Here, you do this, he needs cardiac massage. Five breaths then let me
pump. Don’t worry, he’ll be all right.”
I did what she said and it felt like I was blowing into the hold of a ship,
something I could never fill up if I stayed crouched over him forever. We
took turns doing our thing. I was getting worried the guy would die, but
Bella didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. Her movements were sure and
professional and after a minute Rudy started to splutter and breathe, even
though he was still unconscious. As soon as this happened Bella turned
away from him and began dressing like he wasn’t in the room. I yanked my
clothes on in about five seconds flat and stood waiting by the door. Bella
took her own sweet time.
“Relax. He’ll be out for two hours at least. I hope you feel proud of
yourself. You helped save his life.”
“Let’s just get out of here.”
“Is anything wrong?”
“It wasn’t really what I was expecting.”
“He’ll be all right. The drug’s only dangerous with heart conditions.”
“How do you know he doesn’t have one?”
“He’s breathing.”
“But you didn’t know that before you gave it to him.”
“You can’t have excitement without risk.”
“Should we call an ambulance?”
“I’m ready now. Come on, we’ll get a cab on the next block.”
We left Rudy where he was. His hard-on had gone and he looked kind
of pathetic lying there covered with spunk, but at least he was alive. Outside
I thought about going back to check on him, but Bella had already flagged a
cab, and I was too worried about getting busted.
When the cab started to roll I asked to be dropped in Hollywood. Bella
looked upset and told the driver to pull over. We got out and talked in
whispers on the sidewalk.
“What’s the matter, Jack?”
“We almost killed that guy.”
“No we didn’t.”
“What do you mean, we didn’t?”
“He was healthy enough, there was very little chance he’d sustain any
permanent damage.”
“It didn’t look that way to me. Jesus, I thought he was going to snap in
half.”
“Aren’t you going to come home with me?”
“I need some downtime. I mean, Jesus … Besides, I have to test for
Channel 52 tomorrow. Burbank’s closer from my place.”
“You spoke to Welks? That’s great. You should have told me.”
“I was going to wait and see how it went first.”
“Come back to Malibu, you can take the limo tomorrow.”
“It’d be better if I didn’t, really. Just for tonight.”
 “I’m sorry, Jack. I thought it would excite you.”
I was tempted to give in, but I had to think of the future. A little bit of
playing hard to get could go a long way. At least that’s how it went on TV.
Plus, I knew I’d need pills to make it through the test, and Malibu wasn’t
the place for a poor boy to score.
“Will you come to the house tomorrow? After you’ve finished?”
“Sure.”
“How are you going to get to the studio? You don’t have your car.”
“Cab, I suppose.”
“Take mine. This too.”
She handed me the keys to the 850ci and a wad of hundreds.
We kissed and she got back in the cab and drove away. I stood looking
after her, wondering if I’d done the right thing. It was a fine line to tread.
I took a cab back to the drag and picked up the Beemer. Alone behind
the wheel, smelling the leather, feeling the incredible grip the car had on the
road, I knew I wasn’t going to let anything on earth fuck up my chance at
Bella.
Ryan chopped lines out, straight onto the Formica of the table in the
kitchen.
He’d rolled up while I was parking in the lot out back of my building
and told me he felt good enough to party. So now we were bent over,
hoovering caine through a couple of Bella’s hundred-dollar bills. When he
finished, Ryan didn’t bother to give his back. I didn’t say anything, I was
too busy worrying about exactly where in the course of the evening he’d
latched onto me.
“I’m curious about those wheels downstairs, Jackie. In fact, tonight I’m
curious about a lot of things.”
“You know whose they are.”
“I know who owns them. What I don’t know is how come you’ve got
them.”
“We were out. I wanted to come back here, she didn’t. Just worked out
more convenient this way.”
“You two must be getting close. You have a good time tonight?”
“It was okay.”
“A woman like that, it’s gotta be more than okay. What did you do?”
 “This and that.”
“The same old same old, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s an uphill fucking struggle with you, boy, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You ain’t the only one with a new toy.”
Out in the main room Ryan picked up a bag he’d left by the door and
took out a snappy new video camera, the small tourist kind you could hold
with one hand.
“Like it? Took it off a hooker who had this idea she was going to try out
the personalized end of the porno market. Thought it might come in handy
for what we talked about last time.”
“Which was?”
“Your high-ass Malibu bim. Don’t tell me you forgot.”
“We didn’t talk about anything.”
“Yeah we did—the blackmail thing.”
“You talked about it, not me. I don’t want any part of it.”
“Well, now, after tonight you don’t have a choice. You took a couple of
big steps backward in that motel room.”
I wanted to say something smart and relaxed, but I suddenly felt too
nauseous to open my mouth.
“Let me illustrate.”
Ryan fucked around with a couple of leads and the TV, then used the
camera to drive the minicassette. On the screen a cross of peeling paint
blurred out of existence as focus went beyond a window frame and through
a gap between badly patterned curtains. A cheap motel room—three people
on a bed. Me, Bella, and Rudy.
“Fuck.”
“Fuck is right, Jackie.”
“Listen, I didn’t know she was—”
“Let’s just watch it. Excellent picture quality, wouldn’t you say?
Amazing what these Japs can do.”
He killed the tape after Bella finished dressing.
“That’s one good fucking body. Shame I couldn’t get more of your cock
going into her, but I was kinda limited for angles.”
 “I didn’t know anything about that injection. All she said was she
wanted to get it both ways. Jesus, I almost shit when I saw what she was
doing. If I’d known—”
“Slow down, Jackie. This doesn’t have to be a problem for you. It can
go two ways. First, I could add it to the wino thing and all your other
bullshit and let it find its way into Karen’s file back at homicide. Or—”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything.”
“But you were there and you didn’t try to stop her.”
“But we brought him around. If we wanted to hurt him why would we
do that?”
“Yeah, she was cool there. That guy dropping out didn’t faze her a bit.
She got paramedic training or something?”
I thought for a second about telling him Bella was a doctor—like there
was no way she was going to let somebody die and the guy was never in
any danger—but with the surgical slant on Karen’s killing I figured it would
do more harm than good.
“How would I know?”
“What about the shit she hit him with? What was that?”
“Look, Ryan, I don’t know anything about her. She’s just someone I
fuck, okay?”
“I’m glad you feel that way, Jackie, ’cause it brings me to the second
option you got.”
He stopped to cut out more lines on top of the TV. When he’d done his
share he started pacing the room. I could see his jaws clenching under the
soft fat of his cheeks. He looked wired enough to start shadow-boxing.
“Yeah, your second option would be a much smarter choice. Ready? We
show the tape to Miss fucking Vernier herself. Whaddya think?”
He stopped in front of me with an expression on his face like he really
expected me to agree with him.
“Whaddya say, Jackie? That bitch would lay out big bucks to squash
something like this.”
“You’ve got the tape, you don’t need my permission.”
“But I want you involved. It’d buy a lot of goodwill—something you
need right now. Plus, I’ll give you a cut.”
“Fuck, no one got hurt, no one got ripped off. Can’t you just leave it?”
 “Jackie, I’m gonna get something out of this one way or the other. Me?
I’d rather have the money, but …”
“What do you need me for?”
“To explain things, to smooth the way. You tell her you saw the tape and
a genuine threat exists. Then, when we meet, we don’t have to fuck around
so much.”
“You want to meet her?”
“I ain’t about to let you do the negotiating. Come on, it’ll be fun,
something we can share. Like we shared Karen.”
“We didn’t share Karen.”
“Our cocks were going the same place. I’m giving you a chance, Jackie,
you oughta take it. All you gotta do is set up a meeting.”
He moved behind me and started rubbing my neck.
“Yes or no? Some money from a cunt who can easily afford it, or a
shitload of hassle vis-à-vis the murder of your wife.”
“I don’t know when I’m seeing her again. It might take a few days.”
“Hey, don’t I look laid-back? I can wait a couple of days.”

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Twenty-Two
Channel 52 had space on the Warner lot in Burbank—production offices
and a couple of small studios that churned out low-budget programs offbeat
enough for the under—twenty-fives, but still far enough infield to mutate
into middle-America living room pap if the station ever clawed its way
beyond the fringe.
I found Larry Burns’s office on the second floor of a prefab building
that looked like it was designed to be loaded onto the back of a truck—
exterior stairs and walkways, air conditioner vents like ugly afterthoughts
under windows blank with wooden venetian blinds. I had to wait half an
hour with his secretary before the fucker came out to see me.
Larry looked like a guy who lived on his dick. He wore light-weight
cotton slacks and I could see it hanging down the inside of his left pants leg.
It was big, no doubt about it, but it didn’t make up for the mess that was the
rest of him. He was pear-shaped and soft and he had dandruff on his
shoulders. He had some kind of blackhead problem happening with his nose
and he’d broken so many capillaries trying to pick them out that the center
of his face looked like a permanent boil. It was upsetting to find someone
like him in California. In the film industry.
When he finally showed he didn’t say anything, just jerked his head at
me and strode outside. I followed him through narrow streets between
hangar-shaped soundstages and workshops to a permanent set they used for
one of their sitcoms—kind of a cutaway house with no roof or outside
walls. Right now it was deserted except for the living room section where
three guys and a camera waited at the edge of a pool of bright light. The
floor was littered with cables and old bits of silver adhesive tape.
The guys with the camera introduced themselves as director,
cameraman, and sound recordist. They pretty much ignored Burns, but they
were cool enough toward me. I had to stand out in the light, behind a mark
someone had taped on the floor, and speak to camera. Under the lens there
was an autocue which the director operated. I guess for a test with a good
possibility of bombing they weren’t prepared to shell out for extra staff.
 The director told me to relax and pretend the camera was a person. But I
knew better than that from my telehosting course. I knew to pretend that the
camera was a window into the universal living room. That way you kept
your appeal broad and didn’t become inappropriately intimate.
I felt okay. I knew I could do it. I knew that I had to do it. On screen,
the projection of confidence is your greatest asset. And I was projecting as
hard as I could. Plus, the cocktail of pills I’d taken that morning to kill my
nerves was kicking in just fine.
Ten seconds in, I realized the autocue script was one of Lorn’s from last
week’s 28 FPS show—an investigation into the different types of sanitary
napkins used by various female stars. A joke on me by Burns, I suppose,
but I remembered quite a bit of it and got it off smoother than I would have
cold. After that they repositioned the camera and had me do it again.
Burns sat back in the shadows watching me on a monitor. When it was
over he barked at the director to send him a cassette, then powered back out
into the sunshine like he had things a whole lot more important than me to
deal with. When he noticed I was following him he slowed fractionally.
“I’m not totally unhappy. We’ll discuss and let you know. Parking lot’s
along there, then right.”
He didn’t say goodbye, didn’t wait for me to, either. I watched him take
a sharp corner and head for his building. Then I got lost accidentally on
purpose and spent an hour or so wandering around, breathing the fresh-cut
timber smell of newly constructed sets. Trying to suck in and keep forever
the history that was there, the presence through the years of generations of
people whose whole worlds had spun within the safely insulated Hollywood
perimeter. Who thought anywhere else was just someplace you wouldn’t
want to be.
On one of the prop streets they were shooting a storefront scene. A guy
had to walk out the door, say his line to a waiting bimbo, then freeze
looking off into the distance. I watched them go through it a half-dozen
times, it got tedious, but the actor fascinated me. His clothes didn’t crease,
his hair stayed in place, he didn’t sweat. The sun that burned the rest of the
crew didn’t reach him.
I looked carefully at his face at the end of each take and I knew he
wasn’t there. He was already in his limo heading into the hills, coke in his
nose and a seventeen-year-old on his cock.
 And all he had to do was walk through doors in a minor TV movie. I
didn’t even know his name.
Later, a couple of security guys escorted me off the lot in a golf cart.
I spent the next few weeks out at Malibu. Apart from the obvious
advantages, it put distance between me and Ryan. I knew he’d be itchy for
the blackmail meeting with Bella and the longer I could avoid telling him I
hadn’t done anything to set it up, the longer I’d avoid a beating. He was a
pit-bull motherfucker, but I didn’t think he’d front up at the house so early
in the game.
Bella made it her mission to show me how pleasant money could be and
the time passed in a glutted wonderland of consumption. We hit Rodeo for a
wardrobe—hip suits with trousers that fit properly, a collection of casual
wear the magazines were showing at the time, absurdly priced denim,
leather that felt like it was still alive, shoes, shirts, underwear … A lifetime
of clothes that would all be replaced next season.
She wanted me to have a watch, so I chose one made out of platinum.
She wanted me to have a new car, so we put the latest Mustang on order—a
convertible. Not the most practical choice for L.A., but at her level of
wealth practicalities weren’t something you had to spend a lot of time
worrying about.
With a new sled coming my way I could have sold the Prelude, but I
didn’t. Karen had given up part of herself to buy it, and for me it was too
much of a marker to let go—a possession that drew the line between the
end of one life and the start of another. I put it in an auto storage place near
UCLA instead.
Mornings Bella and I spent in a fug of come and glit, sliding over each
other on sheets that stank of fish. She told me she loved me. I said it right
back and I think she believed me. She was beautiful, she was a great fuck,
but the only thing I loved about her was the potential she had to make my
life better. The emotional connection just wasn’t there. Maybe we came
from worlds that were too different, maybe the feeling she gave off of being
above the usual moral concerns was just too intense. Who knows? How can
you figure why you love someone or why you don’t? And what does it
matter anyhow if you can fake it well enough to fool them?
 Powell was at the house most nights. Bella had told me he usually spent
most of his time at his apartment downtown, so it seemed like an obvious
attempt to make his presence felt. It worked pretty well. Having Bella climb
out of bed so he could stick his faded old bone into her really pissed me off.
It was a constant reiteration of how limited my influence over her really
was.
Still, sucking up the good life kept me pacified. In fact, receiving
expensive goods and services occupied me so fully that for a while I even
managed to sidestep the issue of a possible connection between one or both
of this Malibu duo and Karen’s murder.
But then Powell had two dogs delivered to the house. Black Labradors.
I don’t know where he kept them, I didn’t see them around the grounds, but
two days later I found one of them in the ferns at the edge of the woodland.
It had been killed and gutted, same as the one I’d stepped in on my first day
at the house.
Larry Burns called Bella on her mobile while we were having lunch at a
place on Beverly Drive. He didn’t ask to speak to me, but she passed on the
news, glowing with excitement.
“You’re second presenter on 28 FPS. How does it feel?”
“Fantastic!”
And it did. That one phone call changed the world for me. It lifted me
out of obscurity and put my feet on the first rung of the ladder that led to a
meaningful life. Anyone in L.A. would have killed for the opportunity, and
I’d got it after a single twenty-minute screen test. It felt slightly surreal.
Two months ago I’d been broke and without a future, now I was sitting in
an expensive restaurant, wearing a suit that cost more than four months rent
on my apartment, contemplating the fact that very soon I would cease to be
a nonentity.
“One thing, though, Jack, you mustn’t mention my part in getting you
the job to anyone. Nepotism isn’t good for morale.”
“Yeah, sure. How much are they paying?”
“I’m taking care of your salary—a compromise for your lack of
experience. What do you think? Ten thousand a month? You’ll need
somewhere else to live as well.”
“You want me to move out?”
 “No, but I want you to have an alternative for when it’s necessary.
Television is a gregarious environment and you may have to entertain—you
couldn’t do that at Malibu. It will also take some of the strain off Powell if
you’re away from the house occasionally.”
This conversation resulted shortly afterwards in the acquisition of a
three-bedroom house with pool in Laurel Canyon.
All I had to worry about now was Ryan fucking everything up with his
pissant blackmail scheme.
At Bella’s. I answered the phone. She was doing a half-day at her clinic in
Brentwood and Powell, mercifully, was at his apartment watching incest
vids or shooting smack or whatever else he did with himself. Someone for
me. Not Bella with pornographic endearments to see me through until she
got home but, strangely, Rex. Strange because I hadn’t given him the
number.
“Hey, dude.”
His voice was bad—dragging and nasal. Smacked, of course, but worse
than that, robbed of even the slightest trace of hope or energy. With the
upturn in my situation I could afford to let it make me feel sad.
“How did you get this number?”
“Didn’t you give it to me? I don’t know …”
He was majorly doped. Words tailing off into whispers. I expected him
to fall asleep on the phone.
“You don’t sound too good.”
“I’m fine. What do you mean?”
“Drugged.”
“Oh, yeah, a bit.”
“Where are you?”
“At home … Can you come around? That’s why I’m calling, to see if
you can come around.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. But can you bring some money?”
Rex rented a small run-down house on one of the single-lane streets that
wound into the hills out of West Hollywood. The Mustang had been
delivered that day, so trucking over there wasn’t much of a chore. He took a
while answering my knock and when he did it wasn’t a pretty thing to see.
His face matched the sound of his voice on the phone. Pasty skin, pinned
eyes, picked-out zits. He was shirtless and his jeans looked crusty. I’d
parked the Mustang out front and he spent a little while focusing on it.
“Yours?”
“Not bad, huh?”
“From the woman?”
“Beats sucking dicks.”
Rex grunted and turned away. I followed him down a hall that was
basically untouched, into a living room that was basically an oasis of shit.
Carpet littered with pieces of clothing, dead matches, and empty Coke cans.
One of the cushions on the couch burnt and the foam inside melted. Bloody
syringe sprays on the wall closest to the still-good part of the couch, glasses
half full of water on a coffee table, used works, singed spoons, pieces of
cotton wool, a small patch of puke under an Ansel Adams photo that had
been half ripped off the wall. The room was dark and hot, it felt like
somewhere an animal would go to die.
“Did you bring some money?”
“Yeah.”
I handed over five hundred dollars. “Bit of a change, you being broke.”
“I’m sorry it’s such a hassle.”
“I didn’t say it was a hassle. I’m just surprised.”
Rex counted the money and stuffed it into his pocket.
“They repossessed the Porsche.”
Something on the deck out back of the living room creaked. I couldn’t
see what it was because the curtains were drawn across the sliding glass
doors.
“You look like shit.”
“That’s funny because I don’t feel like anything at all.”
“You’ve got to do something, man. Cut down on the gear.”
“Nope. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to think about where
I’m going, I don’t have to do self-improvement, I don’t have to put
anything by for a rainy day. They say life’s all about the way you look at it.
But if you stop looking, it stops being there.”
Rex turned away. He picked up one of the syringes from the table and
started drawing small quantities of blood from a vein in his arm, squirting it
out against a wall. It upset me that someone who such a short time ago was
helping me make money, who was the closest thing I had to a friend, could
become so distant, so unreachable. But as far as he’d moved from the Rex I
used to know, I knew I’d moved farther. Into my own new world. Into a
place that was so different I could not honestly say I had anything more to
give him than money.
“I have to go.”
“So soon?”
“Where did you get my number, Rex?”
“The guy on the deck gave it to me. He said I should call.”
“What guy?”
“He asked me about Karen, but he’s here to see you.”
Ryan. It had to happen sooner or later. I started to leave the room, but
the sound of the deck door sliding open stopped me. Ryan stuck his head
through the curtains and grinned.
“Jackie, how good of you to come. Let’s have a little chat out here in
the sun, shall we, old man?”
I went out onto the deck, Ryan closed the door behind me.
“I expected to hear from you before now, Jackie boy. But better late
than never. You do have something to tell me, don’t you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh dear, I hope this isn’t going to get nasty. What did she say to our
little proposal?”
“Your proposal.”
“I’m not Mister Lenient today.”
“It’s not the right time to hassle her about it. It could spoil things for
me.”
“Whoops, wrong thing to say.”
He hit me in the face, a straight hard punch to the mouth. In the freeze-
frame seconds it took me to fall to the floor the only thing I thought about
was how a split lip might fuck my upcoming TV appearances. I made a lot
of noise impacting on the wooden planking. Rex must have heard it inside,
but he didn’t come to investigate, or to save me. And free of such
bothersome interruptions, Ryan proceeded to kick the shit out of my ribs
with his dainty little feet. It hurt a lot. I curled up and closed my eyes and
waited for it to stop. It took a while.
 “You’ll have to excuse me, Jackie, my temper isn’t the best today.”
He moved away from me, breathing heavily, and coughed something
into a handkerchief. I got up and leaned against the railing. The house was
built out over a small canyon, one of those things on stilts that cling to the
hills, counting the minutes until the big one hits. Below me there was a lot
of foliage made soft by the late-afternoon sun. It seemed an oddly pretty
place to take a beating.
“Do you see how important this is now? She’s only someone you’re
fucking.”
“She’s more than that.”
“Oh, Jackie, I’m all aquiver.”
“If you wait a couple of months I’ll be able to pay you something
myself.”
“But not as much as she could. No deal. Have we communicated?”
I ran through the possible progression of events—I tell Bella Ryan’s got
a tape, she starts wondering how come he just happened to be there at the
right time then realizes I’m carrying some extra baggage, a cop getting so
close to whatever illegal medical activities she’s engaged in makes her
nervous, and it’s adios life at Malibu—the car, the money, and, worst of all,
the chance at TV entry.
But what was the alternative? From the look of Ryan, something life-
threatening.
I nodded painfully. My mouth was already beginning to swell.
“That’s my boy. Let’s sit a while with your friend, I need to unwind.”
“How did you connect us?”
“Once you shacked up with your cunt I knew you wouldn’t be in any
hurry to get in touch, so I pulled the phone records on your Hollywood
place. There were only two addresses to trace—here, and some fuck service
in the Wilshire district. Soon as I saw Rexy I got a feeling this was the one
to go with.”
Back in the lounge Rex was sitting on the good part of the couch. His
eyes were closed, but he was awake and as we came in he dragged them
open and looked at my mouth.
“Sounded noisy.”
“But you didn’t feel like checking.”
“Thought I was dreaming.”
 We sat in the chairs that went with the couch. All I could think of was
getting in my car and heading home, but Ryan, pumped from his recent
violence, wanted diversion.
“How about some gear, Rexy old boy?”
“Haven’t got any clean works.”
“Foil will do. I’m sure you’ve got some of that. Go find it.” Rex took a
long time getting to his feet, then disappeared to some other part of the
house. I heard things crashing around—pans, plates, glasses.
Ryan stretched in his chair and scanned the room.
“Looks like your friend’s got a self-image problem.”
Rex came back with a crumpled patch of tin foil and Ryan and I chased
brown smack. No rush, just a low-burn stone that doesn’t really punch
home until you stand up or try and remember something. Mostly a waste of
an expensive drug, but Ryan probably drew the line at syringes and I had to
get back to Malibu. I wouldn’t have bothered with it at all except my mouth
was hurting and I felt a little humiliated by my beating.
“This is fun, us guys together. Could do with some pussy, though.
Whaddya say? Three on one. A hole for everyone.”
Neither Rex nor I made any response.
“Did some checking on your bim, Jackie. Strange coincidence. You
know she’s a doctor? Got a clinic in Brentwood.”
“Of course I know.”
“Interesting, huh? Karen was cut up by someone with medical
knowledge—you’re going out with a doctor. A doctor who likes injecting
people in motel rooms.”
“That doesn’t make her the killer.”
“It doesn’t make her not the killer, either. She tell you about Daddy?”
“He’s a doctor too.”
“Not quite, fuckhole. I did some checking. He used to be a surgeon, but
he fucked up.”
“Oh yeah?”
“She didn’t tell you, did she? Shit, Jackie, it don’t sound like you rate
too high.”
He giggled and shook his head.
“Seems, a long time back, he developed a habit of visiting the restricted
medicines cabinet between operations. He got caught. The hospital didn’t
press criminal charges but the AMA disbarred him, or whatever they do to
doctors, and he couldn’t work anymore. What he does now I don’t know,
but it ain’t doctoring.”
Ryan rubbed his balls and nodded at Rex.
“Been buddies long?”
“A while.”
“You came running plenty fast when he called.”
“So what?”
“Just wondering how close you really are.”
“Jesus Christ …”
“Hey, Rex, you like men or women?”
Rex had been nodding again, but mention of his name jerked his head
up.
“I’m ambivalent.”
“Ooo, sounds promising. You feeling sexy, Rexy?”
“You can do me if you want to pay.”
“You call that enthusiasm?”
“I call it business.”
“How about a free introductory offer?”
“Get fucked.”
Ryan took out his gun and waved it loosely around.
“You could always go to work on this.”
Rex sighed, pushed himself off the couch, and dropped to his knees
between Ryan’s legs. When he started unzipping I got up to leave.
“Sit down, Jackie. You ought to know by now I like to share these
special moments with you.”
Ryan’s dick came out of his pants soft, like a large white slug, and Rex
had to suck for a while to get it hard. Ryan tilted his head so he could watch
it going in. He started to sweat.
“Hey, Jackie, get me one of my pills. In my pocket.”
“Get it yourself.”
“Jackie …”
There was a dangerous edge to his voice. I got up and felt through his
pockets until I found the pill bottle. When I held one out to him he wouldn’t
take it.
“You do it.”
 The sight of his open mouth, tongue sticking out all wet and red, was
more disgusting than his hard-on. I dropped the pill in and moved quickly
back to my chair.
Sex on smack is a drawn-out affair and Ryan didn’t seem to be making
much effort to hurry it along. Rex sucked until his spit ran down the side of
Ryan’s cock.
“Okay, Rexy, time to change ends.”
They moved into the middle of the floor. Rex stripped down and got on
all fours. Ryan heaved into position behind him.
“Whoa, looks a bit dry to me. Come over and spit on his ass, Jackie.”
“What?”
“You’re on that tape as well as your girlfriend. Don’t piss me off.”
I stood over Rex’s ass, getting ready to dribble a gob down, hoping it
would find its mark. But that wasn’t good enough for Ryan.
“Bend down, get close. How many times do you want to have to do it?”
I stooped over until I could smell asshole funk and let fly with a
mouthful.
“Oh, no, no, no. Not that thin white shit. We need something better than
that, don’t we, Rexy? Get some green back-of-the-throat stuff. I’m talking
high-viscosity, boy. Go on, lay it right there, right on the old bull’s-eye.”
I hawked and snorted a wad together then pumped it out. It hit pretty
much dead center.
“That’s the ticket.”
Ryan smeared it around with the end of his dick, then pushed himself
inside.
They fucked for a long time. Ryan dripped. Rex looked like he was
dozing. I counted syringes until I realized Ryan was talking to me again.
“—round here and get into his mouth.”
“Huh?”
“Both of us together. Come on. You in his head, me in his ass. It’ll be
like we’re fucking each other.”
Ryan’s gun was on the cushion of the couch. He reached out and cocked
it, kept his hand on it, looking at me.
This kind of scene was nothing new to Rex. He’d sucked a million
cocks. But I wasn’t business. We knew each other, we’d been friends. The
act would carry a shitload of weight and I didn’t want to be part of it. But it
was clear Ryan was going to make it an issue if I refused. So I cursed, got
up, and put my dick into Rex’s mouth.
I was beyond boredom, beyond protest. Smacked and drained by the
whole scene. Rex was so stoned he didn’t even open his eyes when he felt
the end of my dick against his lips. He just opened up and started to rock his
head. Ryan watched me with a half smile—my face, the movement of my
hips. We synchronized—him holding onto ass flesh, me to shoulders, both
of us jamming into Rex so that I imagined he must be compressing
somewhere in the middle.
We finished and pulled out. Rex climbed onto the couch and started
cooking up a shot like nobody was there, like nothing had happened. His
depression seemed to have rendered him completely neutral, a being at the
whim of any force that chose to move him.
When Ryan and I left he glanced at me like he was going to say
something, but halfway into it he ran out of energy and couldn’t carry
through.
Out on the street I dawdled, hoping Ryan would fuck off and not notice
the Mustang, but that was pretty much impossible considering where I’d
parked it. He ran his fingers over the glossy paintwork.
“A little love gift? You know, Jackie, I’ve got a good feeling about what
we’re getting into. If this is what she drops to say thank you for a fuck, the
cash she’ll lay out for our tape could be considerable. Don’t make me come
looking for you.”

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 Chapter Twenty-Three
Bella was swimming naked when I got back to Malibu. I sat in a chair at the
edge of the pool and waited for her to notice my swollen lip.
“Jack, what happened? Have you been mugged?”
Her body came out of the water shining and white. She stood in front of
me, dark hair plastered to her shoulders, water running between her breasts,
from the matted peak of her cunt hair.
“Are you all right? Let me see.”
She bent down to do the professional doctor thing, but I stopped her.
“We have to talk about something. It isn’t good.”
Bella frowned, then pulled a chair around and sat facing me. She didn’t
bother with a towel.
“There’s a video of what we did to that guy in the motel.”
“No there isn’t.”
“There is. I’ve seen it. You aren’t the only one with a camera.”
For a fraction of a second Bella’s face betrayed panic, but she killed the
reaction before it had time to take hold. I could see her locking herself
together against it, containing it in favor of a more productive alternative.
“Tell me about it.”
“A guy was hanging around outside. He saw the three of us go into one
room and figured it was going to be a sex thing. He found a gap in the
curtains and now he’s got a tape to sell.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know. A guy who gets off peeping into bedrooms. He said his
name was Ryan.”
“He wants money?”
“What else?”
Bella ran the problem for a while, then something occurred to her.
“How did he contact you?”
“He phoned while you were at Brentwood. He wanted me to meet him
at some motel. That’s where I’ve been.”
“How did he get the number?”
 “I don’t know. Maybe he followed us back and got it from the address.”
“It’s unlisted.”
“Well, however he did, he got it. And he’s got a tape and it’s us on it,
the whole injection bit, everything.”
“Does he know I’m a doctor?”
“He didn’t mention it.”
Bella did some more thinking, then pushed the wet hair back from her
face.
“I want to meet him.”
It surprised me she was so eager, but it saved me the hassle of
persuading her to agree to it.
“That’s what he wants. Are you going to pay him?”
“At the moment it would seem to be the easiest thing to do.”
“But what if he comes back for more?”
“I have a lot of money. And if it gets beyond a joke we’ll find another
way of handling it.”
Two days later Ryan met Bella and me in my new house on Willow Glen in
Laurel Canyon. I hadn’t had time to furnish it yet and the place was empty
except for a TV and VCR that Bella had had delivered.
When I’d made the arrangements with Ryan the day before I’d asked
him not to blow the Peeping Tom story I’d given Bella. He hadn’t made any
promises but I couldn’t see what he’d get out of telling her about our
previous connection. He might even figure having a man on the inside
would be beneficial to possible future transactions. But that didn’t stop me
shitting myself that he’d do it just out of spite, and I’d had to watch TV
almost constantly after speaking to him to keep my anxiety in check.
The walls of the lounge were white and the floor was bare polished
wood. Bella and Ryan stood close to each other in front of the TV, watching
the tape. I walked around the room, looking out of windows but listening
hard for anything either of them might say.
Bella didn’t seem angry or disgusted by Ryan, in fact it looked like she
was too entranced with the image of her own double-penetration to bother
defining an attitude toward him. When the show was over she stared at
static, absently fingering herself under her skirt. Ryan glanced over at me
wide-eyed then spoke to her.
 “The sex doesn’t mean much, but that injection … Was he dead there
for a minute?”
“You don’t need to emphasize anything. I’m aware of what it shows.
How much do you want?”
“Fifty thousand.”
“That sounds possible. I have something I’d like you to watch first,
though.”
Bella smiled at him, her eyes had the heavy dark look they got when she
wanted to be fucked. Whether it was real or faked I couldn’t tell. She took a
cassette out of her bag and had him load it. I didn’t have any idea what she
was doing.
The tape ran. I recognized the sitting room in Bella’s suite at Malibu.
She was on her back, legs spread to camera, fucking herself with a vibrator.
Ten seconds in, I realized the action had been paced for maximum
cinematic effect, her movements were too extravagant for a simple wank. I
wondered if Ryan noticed, but he was so locked into the scene he probably
didn’t care one way or the other. Bella leaned against him, whispering into
his ear, stroking the front of his pants. Mister Frightening, the man who
watched women get jackhammered, seemed robbed of self-will by her voice
and the pressure of her hand.
I heard his fly open, saw one of his legs tremble momentarily. I moved
further round the room so I could watch. His cock looked thick in her hand.
The skin under its head bunched and stretched as she stroked. She timed it
to the video and he spurted seed across the floor as she came, or fake came,
on screen. She flicked jism off her fingers and wiped her hand with a tissue
while Ryan stuffed his cock back inside his trousers. “That supposed to
make me drop my price?”
“Not at all. I just thought that where a sum like fifty thousand dollars is
concerned we should connect on a more personal level.”
“Right …” Ryan sounded a trifle uncertain, like he had no idea what the
wank had been about. “How do you want to do it?”
“Jack will call you to make the arrangements.”
“You don’t get the tape till then.”
“It hardly matters. You can’t exactly give me the negatives, can you?
It’s time for you to go, Jack and I are expecting some furniture.”
“Will you come along with the money?”
 “Perhaps.”
We watched Ryan’s gray Plymouth pull out of the drive. Halfway down
the hill it passed two large delivery trucks coming the other way—
possessions for my new life.
We detoured for dinner on the way back to Malibu, down to the shitty end
of Melrose and a Mexican joint with good food and a lot of photos of
famous diners on the walls. A little down-market for Bella, but I wanted a
burrito and the dimness of the place made me feel less exposed to the
uncertainties her interaction with Ryan had raised.
“What were you whispering to him?”
“Nothing important.”
“But what?”
“I was just describing how the vibrator felt.”
“Do I ask why?”
“Same as I told him, I wanted to create a link other than the money. It
may be for nothing, but if he becomes a problem it could give us an edge.”
I drank margaritas until they burned my stomach in celebration of the
fact that Ryan hadn’t yet fucked up my progress toward the high life. Bella
had to drive us home in the 850ci.
Next morning Larry Burns’s secretary phoned and told me to turn up at
the Warner lot by midday to start work.

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 Chapter Twenty-Four
Makeup was in a block-mounted trailer outside a soundstage. The seats
weren’t padded and I couldn’t smoke, but it felt great to have skinny girls
fussing over me, to be the center of attention in a town where the ability to
attract attention is the single most important attribute a human being can
possess. They cut my hair, angling it in above the ears because it looked
better on TV that way, and put a load of stuff on my face. The director came
in for a thirty-second hello and a script girl gave me a couple of pages to get
familiar with. While I was reading them a messenger arrived with a card
from Howard Welks welcoming me on board. It came attached to a brown
plastic tube of 10mg Valium. I wasn’t sure if it was a hint that I wouldn’t be
able to hack it, or whether it was just a cool present at a time when doctors
were reluctant to prescribe downers. Whatever, I was reasonably coked and
adding a little benzo to my bloodstream didn’t seem like a bad idea.
I looked good in the mirror. They’d given me drops to clear my eyes
and mousse to thicken my hair. Foundation and powder made my skin look
smooth. For no reason at all I felt like jerking off over Ryan’s photos.
Inside the subdivided soundstage the assistant director had me run through a
series of link-shots. He told me it was all I was going to do for a while until
I got easy in front of the camera. I didn’t care. If it went on too long I’d get
Bella to call Welks.
A moron could have done the work. All I had to do was stand in front of
a blue screen and read a couple of lines at a time off the autocue, the same
stuff I’d already half memorized in makeup earlier. There were a lot of
people in the studio, but the cocaine and the radiance of the set lights
insulated me from them, formed a dazzling cocoon that sealed away my
self-consciousness and prevented it from sabotaging this, my first step
toward celebrity. I was on. I was up. I threw out vitality with halogen
intensity. Shit, anyone can make an effort if it means getting on TV.
I finished everything they needed me for around three. The director had
a break then, too, and took me to a bar off the lot. His name was James and
he said he loved what I did, but it was pretty obvious he was drinking with
me to see how much I knew about film. I couldn’t match him on who
directed what, or when a particular process became available to the
industry. But I beat him hands down on who was fucking who and how
much they paid for their houses.
After a bit he left to get back to the studio—Lorn was coming in to do
some cutaways. I stayed to get another Southern and one of the makeup
girls came in with a friend. We drank together, then I let her suck me off in
the bathroom. Not because I was attracted to her, or even because I felt like
having sex, but just because it was one of the things you could get if you
were on TV and it seemed stupid to turn it down.
Outside. Afterwards. The air was heavy and the hills around Burbank
were hazed. All the dead people up on the slopes of Forest Lawn made me
think of Karen. I had ten grand a month and a place in the hills now. It
would have been enough to have kept her with me, to have made her
whoring unnecessary. Money solves all problems. It makes people love you.
It makes them stay with you when they would otherwise leave. With ten K a
month I could have given Karen a life so good it would simply have cost
her too much to leave me.
The adrenaline from my first day shooting started to turn bad, mixing
with the burned-out coke, Valium, and booze, making me feel stale and
vulnerable. I wanted things to be simple, to have Bella and what she could
do for me, without the danger of Ryan and Powell and blackmail and
murder.
I went back to the parking lot at Warner and sat in the Mustang
watching the traffic pass outside the gates, wishing I could be free of the
past, but keep the present.
Bella called me on my mobile as I was about to start the car. We chatted
about the day’s taping, then she told me Powell had located a candidate for
their healthcare scheme and that I shouldn’t bother coming to Malibu that
night as she wouldn’t be there. I didn’t care. I was too tired to make the slog
out to the house anyhow—all I really wanted right then was to shut myself
away and go to sleep.
The house on Willow Glen was open-plan with a lot of glass. I’d chosen it
because of the amount of air and light that went with the rooms. Everything
in it was new. I’d left the walls bare—no pictures, no ornaments—but I’d
picked the furniture and the technology carefully; they were all the
decoration I needed.
Early evening. I drank a bottle of Gatorade and went to sleep on top of a
Japanese quilt that cost two thousand dollars. I didn’t wake until the phone
rang around eleven.
I couldn’t assimilate at first. I knew the voice, but the fact that it was
calling me caused momentary brainlock. Powell. Sounding as smug as he
had when he asked if I wanted to see his photos of Bella. He told me to
meet him in front of the Beverly Hills Civic Center in half an hour. He hung
up before I could ask questions.
I showered, dressed, put the top up on the Mustang, and powered down
Laurel Canyon through the still-warm night. Sunset to La Cienega, La
Cienega to Santa Monica Boulevard where the streetlights ran in soft
orange disks over the polished hood of my car and the wind of my passage
drew cigarette smoke through my open window, out into the city.
I was ten minutes late. I wanted to pretend I didn’t give a shit, that
whatever he wanted to see me about couldn’t possibly be worse than the
tape of him with his dick inside Bella. But this time of night, with Bella
apparently out of the loop, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I might be on
line for info relating to Karen’s death.
I pulled up beside his Jag and he ran the window down. Dead eyes
turned on me like something out of The Terminator. His smile looked cut
into his face. He said to follow him. Then he ran the window back up again.
I tailed him through the flats and on up into the hills. At the edge of
Beverly Hills we took San Ysidro Drive along Peavine Canyon for about
three miles to a narrow track called Apricot Lane.
Apricot Lane was marked as a private road but it didn’t have a gate. It
cut right off San Ysidro and a couple of hundred yards later cut right again.
I noticed one or two houses, but they were set way back off the road and
almost hidden by shrubbery. Powell drove past them to the end of the lane
and a large squat building that hadn’t been built to be looked at. Vines had
been planted to break the monotony of its slabbed sand-colored walls, but
they couldn’t disguise the fact that the place was essentially a bunker. The
few windows I could see were barred and a tall fence of steel rails ran
around the perimeter of the property.
 We drove immediately into a four-car garage. The door rolled down
behind us automatically and I knew right away no one lived in the house.
There was none of the crap that usually accumulates in garages, no tools, no
beach equipment, no boxes of junk. The only other thing there besides
Powell’s Jaguar and my Mustang was Bella’s 850ci.
Instead of a door leading into the ground floor of the house there was a
concrete ramp that sloped to the basement. Powell led me down it, told me
not to make any noise, and unlocked a steel-plated door. We went through
it, into something that resembled a microhospital—green walls, vinyl
floors, overhead strip lighting. Powell locked the door behind us, held a
finger to his lips, and motioned me to follow him along a corridor. We
passed a couple of what appeared to be examination rooms with reinforced
doors and security locks, then a set of double swing-doors that gave onto
some sort of pre-op area. Through the small windows in these doors I
caught a glimpse of something that looked like a covered body on a trolley.
A little further along the corridor there was an ordinary wooden door,
unlocked. Powell killed the ceiling lights and eased it open. A small room,
space for two people to stand, a window like cop show interrogation rooms.
He put his lips to my ear and whispered:
“The glass is one-way. Do not make a sound or she will know you are
here. Do not leave this room. I will come for you after we finish. Watch
your lover carefully.”
He left and I looked through the glass. On the other side a hard white
light fell on a small operating theater. It looked like a scaled-down version
of something out of ER—a lot of stainless steel, a lot of equipment that
flashed lights and fed into monitors, trolleys that held rows of shiny
instruments on squares of green material and a big light cluster on a
movable arm. There was no one in it right then, but ten minutes later Powell
and Bella, wearing caps, gowns, and masks, wheeled an unconscious naked
man through a pair of connecting doors and positioned him under the lights.
He lay on his side and had a drip in his arm. The space between his ribs and
hip bone had been coated with some kind of yellow-brown dye.
Powell sat at the man’s head, put a gas feed over his face, and started
turning knobs on a trio of cylinders while Bella hooked the guy up to a
couple of machines. They talked to each other as they worked, but with
their masks and the wall between us I couldn’t make out what they said.
 When she was ready, Bella nodded at Powell, picked up a scalpel, and
started cutting. I couldn’t see too well because her back was toward me, but
it looked like she made a long horizontal incision under the ribs. Her
concentration was intense, she moved quickly and economically, discarding
one instrument after another, plucking fresh ones from the trolley at her
side. I saw smears of blood on her rubber gloves.
The precision of the process fascinated me, but for some reason I
couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that operational efficiency wasn’t the only
thing happening in that room. The way Bella held herself, the way she
pressed her pelvis against the side of the gurney, the grace of her hands and
arms … all of it suggested a sensuality that was out of place against the
hardware of surgery.
It went on a long time and I got tired of standing still. I had to shift
position occasionally to stop my legs aching and once, when I did this, I
bumped the glass of the window. In the operating room Bella froze and
flicked a hard look at Powell, but he was busy concentrating on the
aneasthetic. After a couple of seconds she relaxed and continued what she
was doing.
Sometime later the operation hit its peak. Bella reached inside the man,
made a few final strokes with her scalpel and appeared to cut something
free of whatever held it in place. Then, using both hands, she lifted a curved
thing about five inches long out into the air.
A kidney.
Big surprise.
Deposits of hard yellow fat clung about the base of a severed stem
which protruded from the middle of the inside curve and had obviously
been the thing’s main connection to the body. Thin blood dripped from
strands of tissue that wrapped the smooth organ like a ripped caul. It was a
lot pinker and softer than the ones you see at the meat counter, maybe
because it was so fresh.
Bella put it in a plastic container, clipped a transparent lid over it, and
handed it to Powell. He looked uncertain for a moment and said something
to her. Bella shook her head, turned back to her patient, and started putting
in some internal stitches. Powell spoke to her again but she didn’t answer,
and after a moment’s hesitation he carried the kidney across the room and
put it in a fridge.
 I stayed a little longer, but it was obvious they were on the home stretch
and I couldn’t see the point of standing around just to watch the mop-up—
I’d been in the room close to two hours already. As I eased open the door
Bella was sewing up the guy’s stomach.
I couldn’t get back out into the garage because the steel door needed a
key to be unlocked even from the inside, so I decided to go exploring. At
the far end of the corridor a flight of steps led up to the ground floor of the
house. There was another steel door at the top, but this one was unlocked. I
wandered through the rooms on the other side of it. A lounge and two of the
bedrooms were furnished—carpets, drapes, soft chairs, all the comforts of
home—a facade of normality in which to recover from those tiring kidney
excisions. Everywhere else was bare and looked permanently uninhabited.
The cupboards in the kitchen held cans and packets but nothing fresh. I
locked myself in a bathroom and lit a cigarette.
So, now I knew for certain that Bella took kidneys out of people. And it
was plain that, out of the two of them, it was she, not Powell, who was the
driving force behind the operations.
She’d told me the free medical care thing was her idea, and as a result
I’d taken her involvement in the kidney removals pretty much for granted.
But I’d been hoping she played only a minor role in this darker side of their
philanthropy—as an assistant to Powell say. Or, even better, as an unwilling
participant in an old man’s obsession. Now I knew differently. And it
worried me. Karen’s death was connected to the sale of her kidney, I was
sure of it, and, without anything to say otherwise, it didn’t seem absurd to
suppose that whoever played the dominant role in the operations might well
have played a similar role in her murder. A logical train of thought, but not
one I wanted to pursue. Not while Bella’s freedom meant I appeared on TV.
I concentrated instead on wondering what Powell had been so eager to
reveal to me. It couldn’t be just that Bella was performing an illegal
operation. After all, his role as procurer and anesthetist made him as guilty
as her in that respect. Maybe he thought seeing her open someone up would
turn me off her. But she was, after all, a doctor, even if she wasn’t a
surgeon, and wasn’t that what doctors did?
The only thing I could think was that more was supposed to happen but
didn’t because, after I’d knocked the glass, she’d known she was being
watched. But what the fuck else could she have been planning to do?
 I went back out into the lounge to wait for them, I couldn’t see any
reason why Bella shouldn’t know I was there. Half an hour later they came
up the stairs. Bella didn’t seem surprised to see me.
“Powell brought you?”
Before I could answer, the man himself cut in.
“It was time he knew.”
Bella rounded on him.
“How dare you make that decision.”
“Shouldn’t one’s lover know everything about one?”
Bella smiled mockingly.
“You think if he does, it will end the relationship?”
“I think he should be given the information necessary to make an
informed choice.”
“You are so transparent it’s absurd.”
“Nevertheless, I know the whole of you. And there is nothing I could
learn that would turn me against you. It may not be so with him.”
“Whether it is or is not is no concern of yours. Remember that or you
might find your bed suddenly empty.”
“There are only two kinds of days for me. Those when you allow me to
be with you, and those when you do not. Without you there is nothing more
I can lose. So you should remember that if my bed is empty, your operating
table will be in a similar state. Or do you think he will search the sewers for
you as I do?”
For a moment Bella looked at him like she couldn’t think of an answer,
then she turned abruptly and walked to the head of the stairs. She paused at
the doorway.
“He’ll be conscious soon. Check the pain relief. Come on, Jack.”
She disappeared down the stairs. As I started to follow, Powell caught
my arm and hissed in my ear:
“What you saw was nothing, she knew you were there. You are a child
playing with a very dangerous toy. Be careful it does not turn on you.”
“Get fucked.”
I shook him off and went to join Bella. We kissed in the garage, but we
didn’t talk until we’d driven our cars back to Malibu and got naked in the
pool.
Bella swam a few yards breaststroke. The sky was black, dawn still two or
three hours away, but the pool lights made it easy to see between her legs.
She flipped on to her back and floated, the hair on her cunt rose above the
surface of the water. I moved close and she wrapped herself around me. Her
breasts slid against my chest.
“What did you think?”
“It can’t be legal.”
“It isn’t. But everyone benefits from it. What I told you about the
treatment I give the homeless wasn’t the whole truth. I buy their kidneys
from them. It’s completely voluntary. Powell finds someone on the street
and if I think they can stand the operation I make them an offer. It’s their
choice. Losing a kidney won’t really affect their quality of life and the
amount of money I give them is more than they are ever likely to see at one
time. Most of them won’t reach forty anyway, so they don’t have much to
lose. You’d be surprised how many of them say yes.”
“What do you do with the kidneys?”
“Waiting lists for transplants can run into years.”
“You sell them to people?”
“Of course not. I donate them to various public hospitals.
Anonymously.”
My cock was hard, Bella took hold of it and started rubbing it against
the outside of her cunt. Even under water I could feel the glit between her
labia.
“You don’t strike me as the Robin Hood type.”
“But look what I’m doing for you.”
She said it nicely enough, but the message was clear—don’t fuck
around with someone who’s putting you on TV. I didn’t say anything else.
Bella moved her hand faster. I closed my eyes and saw the girl with the
crowbar up her ass, the bag-head couple fucking each other. I tried to
imagine what it would be like to lie against those bodies, to feel that quiet
flesh against mine. I spurted. My come made white streamers in the clear
pool water.
I woke in the half-light of a false dawn. Bella was asleep on her stomach,
sheets kicked off the bed, the split between the cheeks of her ass filled with
shadow. Outside an animal screamed—not a far off coyote howl somewhere
back in the hills, not a natural woodland waking call. The sound I heard was
close by and full of pain.
I got out of bed and went to the window. Bella didn’t wake. Stars and a
paling sky. The grass that surrounded the house was gray with a light that
sucked the life out of things, left them two dimensional and unpleasant.
Straight out, where anyone at the window would see him, a naked man
crouched over something that kicked. He was working on its belly, pulling
out steaming handfuls of guts, throwing them on the grass around him.
Powell. And the second of the two dogs I had seen delivered.
When the animal was empty he lifted it above his head and held it so
the flaps of its stomach gaped toward my window. I knew the darkness in
the room would hide me but I couldn’t stop myself jerking backward, out of
his line of sight.
Even after I climbed back into bed the image stayed with me—the
ruined dog, Powell’s white body smeared in places with dark blood, his
flaccid cock swinging.
Bella and I ate breakfast together by the pool. The air was silken. I blew
cigarette smoke into it. The sunlight made patterns on the surface of the
water.
Sometime before we finished, Powell came out of the house and told
Bella he wouldn’t be staying at Malibu any longer. He looked more
smacked than usual and had scratches on his hands and face. It sounded like
he wanted some reaction from her, like maybe he wanted her to ask him
why. But she hardly raised her head from the newspaper she was reading
and it occurred to me that last night had been the first time she hadn’t left
me to join him in his bed.
I hadn’t told her what I’d seen from the window.
After he’d gone, we walked in the grounds, holding hands. I steered her to
the patch of grass below her bedroom. The blood looked like thick oil and
the scattered mounds of dog offal were covered with flies. The carcass itself
had disappeared.
Bella groaned in a kind of resigned way. She didn’t seem surprised or
appalled. I prodded something that looked like a length of intestine with the
toe of my shoe.
 “I saw him do this last night.”
“He feels threatened. He’s frightened you’ll take me away from him.”
“It’s a pretty violent reaction.”
“It’s only a dog.”
“It makes me wonder what he’s capable of.”
“What do you mean?”
“One day dogs might not be enough.”
Bella looked at the mess on the ground.
“There is an element of ferocity to it, isn’t there?”
She turned away and walked back to the house. I stayed outside, wading
through the edge of the forest until I found the body of the dog. Slit from
balls to ribs. I looked, but it was hard to tell whether there was semen inside
it or not.
Same type of wound, though. Same disembowelment. Surgical skill.
Tailor-made evidence to tie Powell to Karen’s murder. And the motive? If
Karen and Bella had been lovers and he’d known—and living at Malibu,
even part-time, it would have been impossible for him not to—it was simple
enough. Sexual jealousy.
The day seemed suddenly glorious. The hacked-open dog at my feet
outweighed Bella’s leading role in the operating room ten to one. It tipped
the scales so far away from her they’d never come back. Even if she’d been
aware of the murder, it had to have been Powell who actually committed it,
the wounds were just too similar.
Added to the spunk in Karen’s guts it meant I could go on sucking up
Bella’s money and influence without fear of it one day being stolen from
me by some judicial inconvenience. It also meant I’d have something to
derail Ryan with if he got bored after he’d finalized his blackmail scam and
decided to start riding the frame-Jack-for-murder trail again.
Bella sat in a gray deco chair in the drawing room of her suite, staring out
of the window. She seemed a little distracted and jerked when I came in.
“It’s time I call Ryan. What do you want me to tell him?”
“Tell him to meet me tomorrow. The same motel will do.”
“I can’t make tomorrow, I’m taping.”
“I’ll go by myself.”
“Are you sure? He looked pretty weird.”
 “You’re not jealous, are you?”
“After Powell and that guy in the motel?”
“Good. You have no reason to be. I’ll give him the money and hopefully
we won’t hear from him again.”
“Unlikely.”
“Yes. But money is a powerful thing. With enough of it you can make
anything happen, one way or another. Let me play you something.”
In the video suite Bella fired up the machine and loaded a tape.
“These are some of my donors. Everything I’m doing to them is
medically unnecessary. They must suspect it, but they talk themselves into
letting it happen because they want the money.”
She ran the tape. A series of zero-income types, men and women, in one
of the examination rooms at Apricot Lane. Bella in surgical gown and
mask, hair pulled tightly back. The donors naked. From the way they
behaved I assumed the camera was hidden.
A man undergoing a rectal examination, Bella’s fingers in rubber gloves
slick with lubricant. The same man crouched over a pan on the floor,
producing a stool sample. A young woman with track marks on the insides
of her thighs, cunt held open with a stainless steel clamp so Bella could
douche it with a quart of saline solution. Bella’s entire hand inside the anus
of a black guy who didn’t look much over nineteen. A girl being sick on her
hands and knees after drinking an emetic while Bella took swabs deep
inside her cunt with long-handled Q-tips.
“You have to admit there is something intensely erotic about this level
of invasion.”
I was going to make some noise of agreement, but the action on the tape
jump-cut to another scene and I couldn’t stop myself tensing up. Bella was
no longer gowned and masked, but naked, stretched full-length over another
naked woman, head to toe on the examination bench. They were eating
each other out and the woman’s face was hidden between Bella’s legs, but
when she lifted her head to work her tongue in deeper I could see her
shoulder blade. And the tattoo of a scarab on it.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“You recognized her.”
“No. It’s just … different. Was she a donor?”
 “She became a donor, yes.”
On screen Bella’s hips jerked, then grooved slowly, relaxing. After a
while she climbed off and the woman on the bench turned her head toward
the camera and smiled—Karen, her face shiny with spit and cunt juice.
Bella froze the picture.
“She was my lover.”
“What happened to her?”
“What do you mean? If you know her, Jack, I’d like you to tell me.”
“I only meant why did the relationship end?”
“Do you know her or not?”
Bella was too hot for the question for me to avoid some sort of answer.
“She looks like a girl who works the drag. Maybe I saw her down there
once or twice, that’s all. What’s the problem?”
“I’m sorry. We had an intense relationship. I’m still a little sensitive
about her.”
“Why did it end?”
“I don’t know. One day she didn’t turn up. I never saw her again.”
“Didn’t you try to get in touch with her?”
“She never told me anything about herself. I didn’t know her last name
or where she lived. There wasn’t much I could do.”
Bella rewound the tape and started it again. She sat on my lap, facing
the screen, and put my dick inside her. She moved hard against me and
when Karen’s dripping face smiled at the camera she came.
Later I phoned Ryan. The Starway Motel was cool with him. When he
heard I wouldn’t be there it was even cooler.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Twenty-Five
Bella left the house late morning the next day, first for the bank, then for the
connection with Ryan. Powell hadn’t come back to Malibu during the night
so I guessed he was still sulking in his apartment downtown.
My call for 28 FPS wasn’t till twelve. I used my time alone to do a
couple of things.
I took Bella’s donor tape from the concealed cupboard in the video
suite, cued it to the segment with Karen, and copied it onto a blank cassette.
It took me about twenty minutes—ten minutes to figure out how to route
the signal from one video deck to the other, and another ten for the copying
because I couldn’t find the high-speed dubbing function. I shat myself the
entire time, listening for cars in the drive, footsteps in the house.
There were other tapes in the cupboard, two I’d already seen—Bella
and Powell fucking, me unconscious having my dick sucked—and three I
hadn’t. I spent another jumpy half hour fast-forwarding through them—a
solo sex exhibition by Bella, another collection of losers undergoing
sexually toned medical examinations, edited highlights from various fuck
sessions that Bella and I had taped since I’d been out at Malibu. Nothing
that linked to Karen. I rewound and put everything back the way it had
been.
I had two reasons for wanting my own personal copy of Bella and
Karen yumming each other. First, the tape proved they’d been lovers, or at
least that they’d had some kind of sexual connection. Added to the snippet
Bella had let drop about Powell sneaking copies of every tape she had, it
backed up my jealousy-as-motive theory about him being the killer. If he
had a copy in his possession it would show he’d been aware of their
relationship, and if he was aware of their relationship he may just have done
something about it.
My other reason was a little less Bella-friendly—insurance against her
ever changing her mind about how nice it was having me around. If she did
have some knowledge of the murder, her rolling around naked with the
victim wouldn’t be a scene she’d want anonymously left on the police
station doorstep.
I put the cassette in the trunk of the Mustang and headed down to PCH.
It was a hot day and I felt excited. Lorn and I were going to be working
together for the first time—a duet interview with some chick who was
going stellar in the porn industry. Not a name recognizable to anyone
outside certain video circles, but someone who could provide enough
titillation to interest the 28 FPS target audience. An easy way to start me off
—Lorn there to hold my hand, no big name to get pissed off if I blew my
lines and forced too many retakes. I told myself to be cool. I’d been
watching Lorn on TV and fancying her for the last twelve months and I
didn’t want her to think I was a dick.
The girl called herself Mistral. I don’t think she knew what it meant, just
saw it somewhere and liked the sound of it. It hardly mattered. When you
function primarily as a collection of orifices, nobody gives a shit how smart
you are—especially if you’re a platinum blonde with implants.
She lived in a narrow house that went toward the beach in a slope—one
of those places where they’re all built so close together along the highway
you can’t see the ocean. Not a big house, no grounds or garden to speak of,
but it was Malibu, and that kind of area code is important on the way up.
There were a couple of vans parked outside when I got there. I did
makeup in one of them then wandered into the house. The crew was setting
up out on the deck, Mistral was in the lounge, smoking a long thin cigarette
and chatting to Lorn and James, the director I’d worked with on my first
day taping.
We intro-ed. James told me to relax, that he’d guide me through the
whole thing. Lorn said she thought she’d seen me someplace before and
gave me a question sheet with J marked next to about every third question.
“They’re yours. She knows what we’re going to ask—”
Mistral blasted smoke through her nostrils and broke in.
“Yeah, I don’t wanna answer no questions that aren’t on that sheet there.
My agent said I wouldn’t have to.”
She had a high whining voice that sounded like it came out of a bad part
of the east coast. She was close to the top when it came to humping on
screen, but it was a cinch she wasn’t going to cross over making a noise like
that.
Lorn patted her knee.
“It’ll be just how you want, honey. Don’t you worry.”
Lorn looked good, like she always did. Black leggings, Reeboks, a tie-
dyed vest that was tight around her tits and showed off her shoulders.
“You wanna see some of my stuff before we start? I got a tape right
here.”
James left to make some calls, but Lorn and I had nothing to do until
shoot time. Mistral was already thumbing the remote.
“This here’s me and Paco Rondello. Boy, when he comes in your mouth
it’s like having a meal. See how my hips are moving there? That’s
something I do, kinda adds sensuality to it, dontcha think? Oh, and now
this, this is one of my favorite takes, ’cause it’s so artistic. When I was
starting off I wouldn’t do an anal sandwich, no way, but eventually in this
profession you loosen up and think what the hell? So it’s two at once, big
deal, to get to the top you have to develop a few specialities. Mind you, I
ain’t into none of that shitting or puking stuff. Nah, it’s gotta be tasteful or I
walk right outta there. See, where I am now I can dictate my terms. Hey, did
you go to Charlie Sheen’s party? Recognition, that’s the important thing in
my industry.”
Lorn nodded distractedly, the stuff on the video seemed to bore her.
After a while she stood up and jerked her head at me. We went outside and
walked down some sun-bleached wooden steps to the edge of the beach.
The sun on the water made a hot path to the horizon that hurt to look at.
There were a few rich people swimming and some more lying on the sand
under umbrellas. They looked relaxed and healthy, satisfied with
themselves, like this time lazing had been well earned.
I wondered how the tramps and the other fuck-ups in Santa Monica felt
today. It seemed a long time ago that they’d been a reality I was sliding
toward. I had a sudden urge to drive down the coast and look at them, to use
them as a gauge for how far I’d come.
“Nice spot.”
Lorn was doing calf stretches on the bottom step. She snorted.
“You’ve got to be kidding. This end of the beach is for wannabes.
Where do you live?”
 “I’ve got a place on Willow Glen.”
“The hills?”
“Laurel Canyon.”
“Got a pool?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Did you think her pussy looked slack in the close-ups?”
“Uh—”
“I’d have it fixed if it was mine.”
“I heard you used to work in a pie shop.”
“Really? Where did you hear that?”
“Around.”
“Well, I haven’t heard anything about you. How’d you get on the show?
It’s not like we needed anyone else.”
“Good honest hard work.”
“Like?”
“You know, this and that.”
“You know how I got here? Merit. I worked my ass off in local radio for
six months. People who get TV handed to them because Daddy knows the
producer piss me off.”
“Hey, same here.”
She looked at me like she couldn’t figure out whether I was joking or
not, then she did a couple more stretches and sat down on a step.
“How long have you been on the coast?”
“A couple of years.”
“Let me give you a tip, newboy. Don’t ask people about their past, it
doesn’t mean anything here. What you’re doing right now is the only thing
that counts.”
“Sure. I didn’t mean anything by the pie shop.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Do you think we’re going to get along?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“Why not? We’re both shallow enough.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“Do you want to run me through what I’m going to be doing?”
“Just wait till your questions come up then ask them. Don’t worry about
the camera, it won’t be on you. We’ll do reaction shots after. Jesus, I hate
doing these no-name bimbos. They can’t introduce you to anyone and they
never have any decent coke. You better go back up, James’ll want to prep
you.”
Out on the deck the camera guys had erected a canopy thing made of gauze
to soften the sunlight. I sat under it on a short calico couch facing Mistral
and felt Arabian. Lorn was next to me. I could smell the perfume of the
styling product in her hair.
It went well enough. Lorn asked questions, I asked questions. Mistral
talked about the way her childhood had forced her into pornography but
how she was glad now because it had a valid place in our society today,
about the money she made, what her artistic goals were. At one point she
wanted close-ups of the implant scars under her tits. They let her have them.
Why not? It made good TV.
I fucked up a couple of my lines and we had to retake. Nobody seemed
to care, and when Lorn did it once herself I realized working in front of the
camera required even less talent than I’d thought.
When there wasn’t anything more to be milked out of Mistral, they shot
Lorn and me asking our questions and reacting to supposed answers. Lorn
had about four stock facial reactions. She ran through them for me, one
after the other. Mistral, who was standing out of shot on the other side of
the deck, saw her and came across to show us her four stock orgasm
expressions. Then she went inside and I heard snatches of her voice as she
explained to one of the crew that she always used a silicone gel so her cunt
looked wet even if she wasn’t feeling in the mood. Which, of course, was
most of the time because she was a professional and being sexually aroused
wouldn’t give her the distance she needed to be truly creative.
The crew packed away their gear. James gave me the thumbs-up and
climbed into his Porsche. Lorn hung around the cars clustered out front of
the house, looking superfluous now that the shoot was over. She watched
traffic swish by on the hot afternoon asphalt as though it was a reminder
that between the highs of shooting, parties, premieres, and talking to the
stars, the underlying foundation of life was a gray rolling mundanity, the
meaning of which she was unable to access. She came over to me, wanting
to fill this downtime.
 “Are you going to Sub tonight?”
“No invite.”
“You can come with me if you want. You should anyhow, it’ll be a good
opportunity to hustle interviews.”
“Okay.”
“I’m empty for the rest of the day. We can get something to eat first.”
“Sorry, I’ll have to meet you there. I’ve got stuff to do.”
Lorn didn’t look disappointed so much as anxious that she might not
have anything to occupy herself with until evening. It wasn’t a move I
wanted to make. Despite our fencing down on the steps I was as attracted to
her in the flesh as I had been to her on the screen. And I didn’t want to get
off on the wrong foot. But what could I do? I had to get over to Rex’s and
stash the tape. I couldn’t risk leaving it in the car or at Willow Glen or any
other place Bella might stumble across it. And on top of that, I’d been
feeling for a few days that I needed to see him, needed to talk through my
last visit to his place.
Lorn and I arranged our meet. I started up my car and drove away. She
went back to watching the traffic.
Rex didn’t answer his door when I knocked, but it wasn’t locked so I
pushed in and went down the hall to the lounge. He was slumped on the
couch, it didn’t look like he’d moved since last time I was there. The room
stank of unwashed body. There was more dried blood on the walls and he’d
added empty cream pudding cartons to the litter of cola cans on the floor.
The blinds were drawn and the curtains across the sliding doors at the back
of the room were still closed. Dim light came in around their edges, more of
it came from the TV.
Rex looked at me blankly, like you’d look at another person in a bus
station. He waited for me to speak first.
“Hi, dude.”
“Hey.”
“This place is … not much better.”
“I’ve achieved stasis. Negative buoyancy. I’m floating under the
surface.”
“It doesn’t smell good.”
 “Jack, it doesn’t matter. It’s my world. I’m acclimatized. Nothing is any
better or any worse than anything else. The only thing you can say about
anything is that it goes on. And it goes on until it stops and then it’s
finished.”
“Rex, you need to see someone. You need to stop taking so much
smack.”
“Nah, you’re wrong. I need to take a whole lot more.”
“Look in the mirror, man. It’s not doing you any good.”
“Oh, but it does. It stops me loving so much.”
“Loving what?”
“Everything. I know you hate a lot of things. You hate being poor, you
hate not being famous, you hated Karen, you hate most people you pass on
the street. But I was never like that. I realized it when I hit that kid. I kind of
dug everything, good or bad. I didn’t have to judge it like you. Things,
people, they were just there. And if I wanted I could take the good from
them. And if I didn’t I could just pass by. But you know what, man? Not
everyone’s like that. And loving a world that doesn’t love you back the
same way, that is so fucking conditional all the time … That gets tiring,
man. You can only do it for so long.”
“But you were earning good money. And no one’s ever going to catch
you for that boy. I mean, can’t you just think yourself out of this? You could
clean up.”
“Don’t be an idiot. There’s nothing to go back to.”
“Are you angry about the other day?”
“Like I said, nothing’s any better or any worse than anything else. But,
yeah, it was kind of a shitty thing to happen. Where is your friend, anyway?
Shame he’s not here, we could do it all over again.”
“Jesus, Rex …”
“No, man, I mean it. I like being degraded further than I can manage
myself. It’s an added bonus to a dull afternoon.”
“Why did you set me up?”
“You’re pissed off with me?”
“You could have warned me. I’m in a vulnerable place right now.”
“He had a fucking gun. What did you want me to do, die for you?”
“You could have dropped a hint.”
 Rex started laughing when I said this. It started out sarcastic but it
ended up sounding sad. He shook his head slowly, then took a wrap out of
his pocket and tapped some smack into a spoon. We were in the same room,
but he was a million miles away. At that moment I knew I could spend the
rest of my life trying to reconnect and I’d never do it. The guy was gone.
“Rex, I need you to hold onto something for me. I can’t risk Ryan
tossing my place and finding it. Can you do that for me?”
“I could be persuaded.”
“You want money?”
“Like I told you, man, we don’t take love here no more.”
“Okay, I’ll pay. Do you want to know what it is?”
“Just give me the money and leave it.”
“I’m sorry about what happened with that kid. And with Ryan. But it
wasn’t my fault, you know?”
“Who said it was?”
“You’re acting like it.”
Rex shrugged and started cooking up. I dropped the tape and all the
cash I had on me next to him on the couch.
“It’s important that it stays safe, Rex.”
He was too busy with his lighter and spoon to answer.
“Rex?”
“I said I’d look after it. Now can you please fuck off?”
***

Back in Laurel Canyon, Willow Glen looked good. It looked like the home
of a young star on the rise, maybe someone who’d just moved from a video
soap to his first feature role as support. An optimistic place full of light and
excitement and youth.
I had a shower and a Coke, then sat up close to the TV and watched a
tape of an old Escape commercial, the one with a couple dreamtiming on a
boat and a small jetty. Drifting images of happiness and ease. I wanted to be
the guy with his thick dark hair and his confidence and his solid
unthreatened existence. I wanted to be the girl with her unassailable beauty,
her excitement and laughter, that flash of white bikini between her legs.
 I had the ad back to back for half an hour. Ten minutes into it I got up
and stuck my photos around the edge of the screen. It made an interesting
juxtaposition. Dead bodies and a perfect way to live. I jerked off and
spurted over everything.
Bella called while the tape was still playing. I watched my come drip on
the floor while we spoke. She told me she loved me. She told me the payoff
to Ryan went fine. She told me he was coming out to Malibu the next day
with a present for us both.
When I put down the phone I felt cold. The present was another tape,
apparently, not of us, but of some other people doing wrong. Bella said it
was the best thing that could happen because it would give us something
incriminating to use against him. I knew that he wasn’t that stupid and that
he’d have his own dangerous reasons for this continued contact with her.
Same as I knew Bella had begun to play a game of her own with him. It
dawned on me that evening that I had lost the ability to influence events in
my own life.
I walked around the house for a while. Then I lit a cigarette, turned on
the pool lights, and went outside to look at the patterns on the surface of the
water. A breeze made the fronds of the palms in the garden rustle.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Twenty-Five
Bella left the house late morning the next day, first for the bank, then for the
connection with Ryan. Powell hadn’t come back to Malibu during the night
so I guessed he was still sulking in his apartment downtown.
My call for 28 FPS wasn’t till twelve. I used my time alone to do a
couple of things.
I took Bella’s donor tape from the concealed cupboard in the video
suite, cued it to the segment with Karen, and copied it onto a blank cassette.
It took me about twenty minutes—ten minutes to figure out how to route
the signal from one video deck to the other, and another ten for the copying
because I couldn’t find the high-speed dubbing function. I shat myself the
entire time, listening for cars in the drive, footsteps in the house.
There were other tapes in the cupboard, two I’d already seen—Bella
and Powell fucking, me unconscious having my dick sucked—and three I
hadn’t. I spent another jumpy half hour fast-forwarding through them—a
solo sex exhibition by Bella, another collection of losers undergoing
sexually toned medical examinations, edited highlights from various fuck
sessions that Bella and I had taped since I’d been out at Malibu. Nothing
that linked to Karen. I rewound and put everything back the way it had
been.
I had two reasons for wanting my own personal copy of Bella and
Karen yumming each other. First, the tape proved they’d been lovers, or at
least that they’d had some kind of sexual connection. Added to the snippet
Bella had let drop about Powell sneaking copies of every tape she had, it
backed up my jealousy-as-motive theory about him being the killer. If he
had a copy in his possession it would show he’d been aware of their
relationship, and if he was aware of their relationship he may just have done
something about it.
My other reason was a little less Bella-friendly—insurance against her
ever changing her mind about how nice it was having me around. If she did
have some knowledge of the murder, her rolling around naked with the
victim wouldn’t be a scene she’d want anonymously left on the police
station doorstep.
I put the cassette in the trunk of the Mustang and headed down to PCH.
It was a hot day and I felt excited. Lorn and I were going to be working
together for the first time—a duet interview with some chick who was
going stellar in the porn industry. Not a name recognizable to anyone
outside certain video circles, but someone who could provide enough
titillation to interest the 28 FPS target audience. An easy way to start me off
—Lorn there to hold my hand, no big name to get pissed off if I blew my
lines and forced too many retakes. I told myself to be cool. I’d been
watching Lorn on TV and fancying her for the last twelve months and I
didn’t want her to think I was a dick.
The girl called herself Mistral. I don’t think she knew what it meant, just
saw it somewhere and liked the sound of it. It hardly mattered. When you
function primarily as a collection of orifices, nobody gives a shit how smart
you are—especially if you’re a platinum blonde with implants.
She lived in a narrow house that went toward the beach in a slope—one
of those places where they’re all built so close together along the highway
you can’t see the ocean. Not a big house, no grounds or garden to speak of,
but it was Malibu, and that kind of area code is important on the way up.
There were a couple of vans parked outside when I got there. I did
makeup in one of them then wandered into the house. The crew was setting
up out on the deck, Mistral was in the lounge, smoking a long thin cigarette
and chatting to Lorn and James, the director I’d worked with on my first
day taping.
We intro-ed. James told me to relax, that he’d guide me through the
whole thing. Lorn said she thought she’d seen me someplace before and
gave me a question sheet with J marked next to about every third question.
“They’re yours. She knows what we’re going to ask—”
Mistral blasted smoke through her nostrils and broke in.
“Yeah, I don’t wanna answer no questions that aren’t on that sheet there.
My agent said I wouldn’t have to.”
She had a high whining voice that sounded like it came out of a bad part
of the east coast. She was close to the top when it came to humping on
screen, but it was a cinch she wasn’t going to cross over making a noise like
that.
Lorn patted her knee.
“It’ll be just how you want, honey. Don’t you worry.”
Lorn looked good, like she always did. Black leggings, Reeboks, a tie-
dyed vest that was tight around her tits and showed off her shoulders.
“You wanna see some of my stuff before we start? I got a tape right
here.”
James left to make some calls, but Lorn and I had nothing to do until
shoot time. Mistral was already thumbing the remote.
“This here’s me and Paco Rondello. Boy, when he comes in your mouth
it’s like having a meal. See how my hips are moving there? That’s
something I do, kinda adds sensuality to it, dontcha think? Oh, and now
this, this is one of my favorite takes, ’cause it’s so artistic. When I was
starting off I wouldn’t do an anal sandwich, no way, but eventually in this
profession you loosen up and think what the hell? So it’s two at once, big
deal, to get to the top you have to develop a few specialities. Mind you, I
ain’t into none of that shitting or puking stuff. Nah, it’s gotta be tasteful or I
walk right outta there. See, where I am now I can dictate my terms. Hey, did
you go to Charlie Sheen’s party? Recognition, that’s the important thing in
my industry.”
Lorn nodded distractedly, the stuff on the video seemed to bore her.
After a while she stood up and jerked her head at me. We went outside and
walked down some sun-bleached wooden steps to the edge of the beach.
The sun on the water made a hot path to the horizon that hurt to look at.
There were a few rich people swimming and some more lying on the sand
under umbrellas. They looked relaxed and healthy, satisfied with
themselves, like this time lazing had been well earned.
I wondered how the tramps and the other fuck-ups in Santa Monica felt
today. It seemed a long time ago that they’d been a reality I was sliding
toward. I had a sudden urge to drive down the coast and look at them, to use
them as a gauge for how far I’d come.
“Nice spot.”
Lorn was doing calf stretches on the bottom step. She snorted.
“You’ve got to be kidding. This end of the beach is for wannabes.
Where do you live?”
 “I’ve got a place on Willow Glen.”
“The hills?”
“Laurel Canyon.”
“Got a pool?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Did you think her pussy looked slack in the close-ups?”
“Uh—”
“I’d have it fixed if it was mine.”
“I heard you used to work in a pie shop.”
“Really? Where did you hear that?”
“Around.”
“Well, I haven’t heard anything about you. How’d you get on the show?
It’s not like we needed anyone else.”
“Good honest hard work.”
“Like?”
“You know, this and that.”
“You know how I got here? Merit. I worked my ass off in local radio for
six months. People who get TV handed to them because Daddy knows the
producer piss me off.”
“Hey, same here.”
She looked at me like she couldn’t figure out whether I was joking or
not, then she did a couple more stretches and sat down on a step.
“How long have you been on the coast?”
“A couple of years.”
“Let me give you a tip, newboy. Don’t ask people about their past, it
doesn’t mean anything here. What you’re doing right now is the only thing
that counts.”
“Sure. I didn’t mean anything by the pie shop.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Do you think we’re going to get along?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“Why not? We’re both shallow enough.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“Do you want to run me through what I’m going to be doing?”
“Just wait till your questions come up then ask them. Don’t worry about
the camera, it won’t be on you. We’ll do reaction shots after. Jesus, I hate
doing these no-name bimbos. They can’t introduce you to anyone and they
never have any decent coke. You better go back up, James’ll want to prep
you.”
Out on the deck the camera guys had erected a canopy thing made of gauze
to soften the sunlight. I sat under it on a short calico couch facing Mistral
and felt Arabian. Lorn was next to me. I could smell the perfume of the
styling product in her hair.
It went well enough. Lorn asked questions, I asked questions. Mistral
talked about the way her childhood had forced her into pornography but
how she was glad now because it had a valid place in our society today,
about the money she made, what her artistic goals were. At one point she
wanted close-ups of the implant scars under her tits. They let her have them.
Why not? It made good TV.
I fucked up a couple of my lines and we had to retake. Nobody seemed
to care, and when Lorn did it once herself I realized working in front of the
camera required even less talent than I’d thought.
When there wasn’t anything more to be milked out of Mistral, they shot
Lorn and me asking our questions and reacting to supposed answers. Lorn
had about four stock facial reactions. She ran through them for me, one
after the other. Mistral, who was standing out of shot on the other side of
the deck, saw her and came across to show us her four stock orgasm
expressions. Then she went inside and I heard snatches of her voice as she
explained to one of the crew that she always used a silicone gel so her cunt
looked wet even if she wasn’t feeling in the mood. Which, of course, was
most of the time because she was a professional and being sexually aroused
wouldn’t give her the distance she needed to be truly creative.
The crew packed away their gear. James gave me the thumbs-up and
climbed into his Porsche. Lorn hung around the cars clustered out front of
the house, looking superfluous now that the shoot was over. She watched
traffic swish by on the hot afternoon asphalt as though it was a reminder
that between the highs of shooting, parties, premieres, and talking to the
stars, the underlying foundation of life was a gray rolling mundanity, the
meaning of which she was unable to access. She came over to me, wanting
to fill this downtime.
 “Are you going to Sub tonight?”
“No invite.”
“You can come with me if you want. You should anyhow, it’ll be a good
opportunity to hustle interviews.”
“Okay.”
“I’m empty for the rest of the day. We can get something to eat first.”
“Sorry, I’ll have to meet you there. I’ve got stuff to do.”
Lorn didn’t look disappointed so much as anxious that she might not
have anything to occupy herself with until evening. It wasn’t a move I
wanted to make. Despite our fencing down on the steps I was as attracted to
her in the flesh as I had been to her on the screen. And I didn’t want to get
off on the wrong foot. But what could I do? I had to get over to Rex’s and
stash the tape. I couldn’t risk leaving it in the car or at Willow Glen or any
other place Bella might stumble across it. And on top of that, I’d been
feeling for a few days that I needed to see him, needed to talk through my
last visit to his place.
Lorn and I arranged our meet. I started up my car and drove away. She
went back to watching the traffic.
Rex didn’t answer his door when I knocked, but it wasn’t locked so I
pushed in and went down the hall to the lounge. He was slumped on the
couch, it didn’t look like he’d moved since last time I was there. The room
stank of unwashed body. There was more dried blood on the walls and he’d
added empty cream pudding cartons to the litter of cola cans on the floor.
The blinds were drawn and the curtains across the sliding doors at the back
of the room were still closed. Dim light came in around their edges, more of
it came from the TV.
Rex looked at me blankly, like you’d look at another person in a bus
station. He waited for me to speak first.
“Hi, dude.”
“Hey.”
“This place is … not much better.”
“I’ve achieved stasis. Negative buoyancy. I’m floating under the
surface.”
“It doesn’t smell good.”
 “Jack, it doesn’t matter. It’s my world. I’m acclimatized. Nothing is any
better or any worse than anything else. The only thing you can say about
anything is that it goes on. And it goes on until it stops and then it’s
finished.”
“Rex, you need to see someone. You need to stop taking so much
smack.”
“Nah, you’re wrong. I need to take a whole lot more.”
“Look in the mirror, man. It’s not doing you any good.”
“Oh, but it does. It stops me loving so much.”
“Loving what?”
“Everything. I know you hate a lot of things. You hate being poor, you
hate not being famous, you hated Karen, you hate most people you pass on
the street. But I was never like that. I realized it when I hit that kid. I kind of
dug everything, good or bad. I didn’t have to judge it like you. Things,
people, they were just there. And if I wanted I could take the good from
them. And if I didn’t I could just pass by. But you know what, man? Not
everyone’s like that. And loving a world that doesn’t love you back the
same way, that is so fucking conditional all the time … That gets tiring,
man. You can only do it for so long.”
“But you were earning good money. And no one’s ever going to catch
you for that boy. I mean, can’t you just think yourself out of this? You could
clean up.”
“Don’t be an idiot. There’s nothing to go back to.”
“Are you angry about the other day?”
“Like I said, nothing’s any better or any worse than anything else. But,
yeah, it was kind of a shitty thing to happen. Where is your friend, anyway?
Shame he’s not here, we could do it all over again.”
“Jesus, Rex …”
“No, man, I mean it. I like being degraded further than I can manage
myself. It’s an added bonus to a dull afternoon.”
“Why did you set me up?”
“You’re pissed off with me?”
“You could have warned me. I’m in a vulnerable place right now.”
“He had a fucking gun. What did you want me to do, die for you?”
“You could have dropped a hint.”
 Rex started laughing when I said this. It started out sarcastic but it
ended up sounding sad. He shook his head slowly, then took a wrap out of
his pocket and tapped some smack into a spoon. We were in the same room,
but he was a million miles away. At that moment I knew I could spend the
rest of my life trying to reconnect and I’d never do it. The guy was gone.
“Rex, I need you to hold onto something for me. I can’t risk Ryan
tossing my place and finding it. Can you do that for me?”
“I could be persuaded.”
“You want money?”
“Like I told you, man, we don’t take love here no more.”
“Okay, I’ll pay. Do you want to know what it is?”
“Just give me the money and leave it.”
“I’m sorry about what happened with that kid. And with Ryan. But it
wasn’t my fault, you know?”
“Who said it was?”
“You’re acting like it.”
Rex shrugged and started cooking up. I dropped the tape and all the
cash I had on me next to him on the couch.
“It’s important that it stays safe, Rex.”
He was too busy with his lighter and spoon to answer.
“Rex?”
“I said I’d look after it. Now can you please fuck off?”
***

Back in Laurel Canyon, Willow Glen looked good. It looked like the home
of a young star on the rise, maybe someone who’d just moved from a video
soap to his first feature role as support. An optimistic place full of light and
excitement and youth.
I had a shower and a Coke, then sat up close to the TV and watched a
tape of an old Escape commercial, the one with a couple dreamtiming on a
boat and a small jetty. Drifting images of happiness and ease. I wanted to be
the guy with his thick dark hair and his confidence and his solid
unthreatened existence. I wanted to be the girl with her unassailable beauty,
her excitement and laughter, that flash of white bikini between her legs.
 I had the ad back to back for half an hour. Ten minutes into it I got up
and stuck my photos around the edge of the screen. It made an interesting
juxtaposition. Dead bodies and a perfect way to live. I jerked off and
spurted over everything.
Bella called while the tape was still playing. I watched my come drip on
the floor while we spoke. She told me she loved me. She told me the payoff
to Ryan went fine. She told me he was coming out to Malibu the next day
with a present for us both.
When I put down the phone I felt cold. The present was another tape,
apparently, not of us, but of some other people doing wrong. Bella said it
was the best thing that could happen because it would give us something
incriminating to use against him. I knew that he wasn’t that stupid and that
he’d have his own dangerous reasons for this continued contact with her.
Same as I knew Bella had begun to play a game of her own with him. It
dawned on me that evening that I had lost the ability to influence events in
my own life.
I walked around the house for a while. Then I lit a cigarette, turned on
the pool lights, and went outside to look at the patterns on the surface of the
water. A breeze made the fronds of the palms in the garden rustle.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Twenty-Six
The toilets at Sub were unisex stalls—black laminate walls with swirls of
glitter embedded in them. Lorn and I shared one and did a reasonable
amount of the coke I’d brought with me—I’d cut it with a little white
smack, but I didn’t think she needed to know that. Then we kissed and I
fingered her, but it didn’t mean anything and we went out into the main bar
area, got drinks, and hung out.
Lorn knew a lot of the people there and after half a vodka and lime she
wandered off to mix with the famous. It was a big place—bars, dance floor,
a raised dining layout—and pretty soon I lost sight of her.
I stayed where I was and watched another race at play. They glowed,
they possessed a vitality the rest of the world was denied. Their eyes shone,
their hair was good, they moved easily in perfectly fitting clothes. And
when they talked it wasn’t about the weather or how the car needed fixing,
but about things that were monumental—six weeks shooting in the Andes, a
crowd shot that involved two thousand extras, the manipulation of
astronomical amounts of money—lives lived every minute of every day at
high speed.
There was a hierarchy, it was unmistakable. Whenever a particularly big
name entered, the whole place paused and turned toward the doors. But
even the lowest of the ranks there, those on the periphery of the film
industry, had lives so much better than the millions who scrabbled in the
city outside, it was impossible to believe they shared the same planet.
Sub was better than the reception at the Bradbury building, better than
being on the Warner lot. This was where people who had their faces on
billboards came to be with others like themselves.
I didn’t see Lorn again that night and I didn’t make an effort to meet
anyone. It was enough to be there, to feel their otherness around me. I left
quite early, afraid too much exposure might overwhelm me.
One last drink at the bar. The barman looked at me for a moment then
asked hadn’t he seen me on 28 FPS? His question almost short-circuited my
head, and as I left through the metal-flake entrance hall, pretty well ripped
on booze and blow, past the crowd that had gathered celebrity-spotting in
the warm night air, my blood fizzed with the knowledge that I had taken the
first steps toward belonging.
***

The morning, though, was different. I woke feeling uneasy and hungover.
The euphoria that had wrapped me at the club was gone. Instead, my guts
were knotted with a gnawing anxiety at the prospect of Ryan’s Malibu visit.
I hauled myself out of bed and fell into the pool. I floated facedown.
But it wasn’t enough to blot him out, so I blew air and sank to the bottom.
And lay like a corpse, looking up through ten feet of water at a warped and
distant sun. I wanted to stay down there, insulated from all the dangers of
the planet, the whole fucking hassle of living—but after a while water
pressure and lack of air made me feel nauseous, so I got out.
On the ground floor at Malibu.
“I know a guy in the security business. He passes things on from time to
time.”
We were sitting in front of a TV—me, Ryan, and Bella. Outside it had
started to rain. People on the slopes were probably freaking at the
unseasonable wetness and worrying about mud slides, but in that room the
rain just drew things closer around us—the heavy stone walls, the
furnishings, Bella’s protective isolation.
Ryan’s latest cassette was in the machine and ready to run. He held the
remote and talked to Bella like I wasn’t there. It was obvious he was
fixating, that he thought he had a chance with her. I’d watched him take
things in when he’d turned up half an hour earlier—the house, her BMW,
the pool, the acreage of the grounds. His eyes had catalogued possessions,
and the desire I saw exploding in him confirmed my fear that allowing him
up to Malibu wasn’t the smartest move Bella could have made. But then,
she didn’t know him as well as I did.
“When I saw that stunt with the guy in the motel I knew you’d be into
what I’ve got here.”
He looked at me and kept his face straight.
“What was your name again?”
 “Jack.”
“Jackie, yeah, that’s right. Well, this is a few steps further down the road
so to speak, but I have a feeling you’re a man who appreciates extremes.
And I expect that goes double for Beauty here.”
He smirked at Bella and started the tape.
“This came out of a security camera. The girl’s some Hispanic who
cleaned the joint after hours.”
On screen two men in ski masks walked into view carrying shotguns
and shoulder satchels. They looked tense, wired for signs of danger. Glass-
fronted display cases bordered the space around them, evidently the
showroom of a small jewelry store. From our point of view, looking down
from a corner of the ceiling, it was possible to see the lower corner of a
door open. The feet of a woman walking backwards came through it. She
was dragging a vacuum. One of the men lunged half out of shot and
wrestled a pretty Mexican girl into view. She looked about twenty and had
great hair that shone even on videotape.
They hit her a few times and pointed their guns at her. She had blood on
her mouth and the crotch of her jeans went dark as she pissed herself. One
of them used wide adhesive tape to gag her and bind her hands behind her
back, the other one pushed up her T-shirt and rubbed her tits. Even in the
terror of the situation the way they swung looked sexy. When he’d finished
having his feel he hit her so hard on the side of her head that her legs
buckled and she slid to the floor. She just sat there looking vacant, like her
brain was off somewhere else, desperately rerouting in an effort to restore
function.
The guys started on the business of the day and Ryan fast-forwarded
through five minutes of display case smashing and jewelry theft.
“All this is just straight robbery bullshit, but things start to happen just
about … here.”
The figures on the screen stumbled back to normal speed. Their bags
were full and the showroom was trashed, bits of glass and wood
everywhere. The girl had curled up on the floor, trying to be invisible. But
she couldn’t quite manage it and as the men started to head out of shot one
of them paused and said something to the other. He checked his watch then
dropped his bag and together they began stripping her. She tried to struggle
but after a few kicks in the stomach she stopped and they draped her
facedown over the remains of a display case. Both men got their cocks out
and the taller of the two started giving it to her in the cunt from behind. The
other guy stood in front of her face wanking and rubbing the end of his
hard-on across her eyes and over the tape that covered her mouth. He had a
hunting knife in his free hand.
The men moved faster. The guy in the saddle fucked so hard the display
case rocked and the one with the knife looked like he was trying to pull his
dick out of his body. A few seconds later he spurted over the girl’s face, did
up his pants, and stood with his knife under her chin, looking at his buddy
like he was waiting for a sign. It came soon enough, a rapid nodding of the
head, and probably a lot of shouting too, but there was no sound on the tape
so I couldn’t hear it. The guy with the knife cut the girl’s throat. Blood
came out of her neck in a wave and made a wide path across the floor. She
shuddered violently like she was having a fit, dragging her tits across
broken bits of glass that still stuck from the sides of the display case. The
guy fucking her slammed in a few final times then threw his head back.
From what I could see through the hole in his mask it looked like he was
howling.
After the men left, the girl’s body flopped about weakly once or twice,
like a fish dying.
“Ever seen anything like that before, Jackie?”
He knew I had. He knew I’d stood with him and watched a girl get
taken apart with a jackhammer.
“How about you, Beauty?”
“Of course not.”
“But you like it, don’t you?”
“Too primitive, no distance, no control.”
“Jackie?”
I didn’t answer. Ryan chuckled.
Bella got up and killed the TV. Ryan tracked her, his eyes pushing into
the creases of her body.
“Maybe it was too much for you, Beauty. Maybe injecting people is
okay, but killing them crosses the line.”
Bella stood in front of him, all of her body behind her cunt, like she had
a hard-on.
 “You’d be surprised at the lines I’ve crossed.”
Then she lifted her skirt and let him eat her. When she’d faked an
orgasm she had me fuck her on the floor while Ryan watched and wanked
himself. I felt his come splat across the cheeks of my ass.
Later, after we’d cleaned up, she called the limo and we went over to
some vegetarian place in Rustic Canyon for food. The restaurant had only
recently opened and the air stank of money. It was too early for the dinner
crowd, but there were still plenty of sleek-looking industry types in
professionally selected clothes and five-figure watches winding up working
lunches. They used a lot of hand movement when they talked. Cell phones
went off every thirty seconds.
Ryan took it all in with the same hungry look he’d had on his face when
he walked into Bella’s house. Watching him sitting there, talking to her like
a normal human being, was unsettling. I knew that he was simply not going
to let things go at fifty grand now. An expensive restaurant, the house at
Malibu, sex with Bella—these were all tastes of a world that would possess
him as much as it did me. I couldn’t understand Bella. She was too smart to
misread him, to pigeonhole him as some petty criminal of limited threat, but
that’s what she appeared to be doing.
I ordered grilled fish. It was the closest thing they had to meat.
Me and Ryan, alone in the men’s room. Our dicks out at a glass urinal that
had fish swimming behind it. Mr. Frightening and me. I was glad that my
clothes were so much better than his. I looked like I belonged, Ryan looked
like he got lost on his way to a beer joint. It gave me an illusion of security.
But it didn’t last.
“I’m getting closer, Jackie.”
“To what?”
“Hand-job first, then today. Next step’s gotta be some deep mattress
action, whaddya say?”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“Oh, Jackie, don’t tell me you’re upset. I thought it’d turn you on.
Maybe if I’d killed her and taken a video you’d find it more exciting.”
“Fuck off.”
“I saw that hard-on in your pants. I bet if you’d been in that jewelry
store you’d have stuck your dick in her neck.”
 “You’re disgusting, Ryan.”
We’d stopped pissing but our dicks were still out. Ryan reached across
and took hold of mine. He squeezed and looked into my eyes.
“I can pull it off or I can stroke it. It’s up to you. I like it up here with
the money. It’d be smart for you to make things easy for me. You know I
can send you straight back to selling your ass any time I want.”
I pulled my dick out of his hand and zipped up, but he didn’t stop.
“You and me are partners, don’t forget it. You think I’m going to stand
around with nothing, while you suck up everything she puts in front of you?
I’m entitled, boy. I spent my life cleaning up other people’s shit and I’m
fucked if I’m going to miss out on this.”
He stepped away from the urinal, fists clenched, dick still hanging out
of his pants. His breathing was ragged and he was sweating. I knew
whatever Bella gave me, whatever life she made possible for me, was never
going to be safe as long as he was around.
“Take a pill and put your dick away.”
“I got a lever on her, Jackie, and I’m gonna use it till it’s all used up.
You can come along for the ride, or you can go back to the gutter. It’s up to
you.”
“You’re underestimating her if you think she’s going to keep paying out
for that tape.”
“See, now that’s the kind of approach that’s gonna keep us tight, you
giving me useful advice. I like that about you, Jackie—you learn fast. But
don’t you worry, that tape was only a foot in the door. Shit don’t happen in
isolation. All I gotta do is look around a little more and something else’ll
turn up, you can bet on it.”
He put his hands on my shoulders and shook me. I thought maybe he
was going to kiss me, but right then a guy came in and Ryan just zipped up
and walked out. I stood in front of the mirror for a little while, looking at
the lines on my face, listening to the sound of piss going down the drain.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Twenty-Seven
For 28 FPS I did more segment intros in front of the blue screen and spent a
day hanging around in front of Chateau Marmont trying to get footage of
Johnny Depp and Kate Moss. All I wanted were a couple of kissy shots as
they climbed into a car or something, perhaps a quick question about
marriage plans. I didn’t get anything. I’d been tipped they’d be there, but by
the end of the day and no show it was obvious I’d been bullshitted. Still, I
got to do the promo for next week’s show. James shot it with me talking to
camera in front of a wall covered with gang graffiti a couple of streets south
of the Marmont. He said it’d help hook in a particular demographic.
Lorn was out of town in Palm Springs trying for nude foot-age of movie
stars taking mud baths. When she’d told me she was going I’d had a sudden
image of black mud sliding between the lips of her cunt. The more time I
spent with her the more I wanted to fuck her. She was good-looking and she
was on TV. Plus, getting cozy with her might make it easier to con a few
extra minutes out of her share of screen time. As a permanent replacement
for Bella, though, she didn’t cut it. Not enough money and not enough
power to bring about significant change.
I hung out at Malibu, swam in the pool, made pornographic home
videos with Bella, and learned how to edit them on the machinery in her
suite. Between taping my segments for 28 FPS and her occasional visits to
her clinic in Brentwood, we did restaurants and shopped. I hardly thought
about my photos of dead people.
It could have been a good time. It could have been real good. Except
that it wasn’t. Ryan shit right into it and turned it all septic. It wasn’t
another demand for Rudy money that brought him back into our world,
though. It was something much worse. Even Bella seemed a little fazed.
She arrived at her clinic one afternoon to find that a guy who could only
have been Ryan had been there earlier that day asking questions. He’d had a
photo with him and he’d wanted to know from the staff if any of them had
ever seen the blonde in the picture. And if Bella was qualified to perform
surgery.
 “They said he told them he was a policeman. Do you think that could be
true?”
Bella stood next to a window that overlooked the grounds and the early
evening light made a silhouette of her profile.
“Making a little extra on the side? It wouldn’t surprise me.
But what does it matter if he is? There’s nothing wrong with you knowing
Karen, is there?”
“Of course not, but I’m in a vulnerable position, my work with the
homeless might be misinterpreted.”
“Did something happen with her that would involve the police?”
“What do you mean?” Bella’s tone was sharp and for a moment her
eyes narrowed.
“Nothing. I’m just wondering how he connected you.”
“I don’t know. And I don’t know what reason he has to ask about her.
She left after her operation and I never saw her again. Is that clear enough?”
“I was only asking … What about the other thing? Why would he want
to know about your qualifications?”
Bella moved away from the window and sat down.
“I can only think he knows something about my operations. The
question is whether this is going to evolve into another blackmail demand,
or whether, if he is a policeman, it’s part of a genuine investigation.”
“It’ll be him on his own.”
“You seem very certain.”
“I don’t think you realize the effect you have on him. He wants you, I
can see it in his face. He wants to fuck you and he wants your money. You
were crazy to bring sex into it.”
“If he’s acting alone it’s the best thing I could have done.”
“Jesus Christ—”
Bella cut me off impatiently.
“You say he wants to get his hooks into me. Well, all right, let him think
that’s what he’s doing. I may not know everything about him, but I know
what kind of man he is, and sex with me will make him a slave. Given time,
whatever he thinks he has on me will be useless to him, because he won’t
have the will to use it.”
PCH at sixty miles an hour. Top down, wind in my hair, sun scattered across
the ocean in drifts of golden petals. Fine fabric, perfectly cut, against my
skin, the crystal of my watch catching the light, turning to a disc of mirror
that somehow took all my Californian dreams from the air about me and
held them there on my wrist so I could see them. The money in my English
calf-skin wallet, the spending potential behind my credit cards—a financial
virility translating into feelings of physical well-being as I headed north for
no other reason than to delight in these things.
That morning it felt necessary, like it might be the last chance I’d get to
indulge myself before the shit came down, the last chance to be willfully
blind for a few hours.
A fast car along the edge of the ocean. If I’d had a blonde beside me I
could have been in a movie. I wished I had a camera set up on the hood.
That way I’d be able to watch myself and see if I matched my possessions.
It was an important thing to know. I had a small amount of recognition and
a reasonable level of disposable income, but 28 FPS ran too late at night
and in too limited an area to attract an audience large enough to generate
fame on a Friends or Melrose Place level. As a result I hadn’t yet reached a
point where I could define myself by other people’s perceptions of me. Next
to Bruce Willis or Brad Pitt I was nothing. Even guys like Judd Nelson
were a million miles ahead of me, safe with their lives already hacked into
the fabric of Hollywood, their fans, their agents, the waiters and producers
who told them endlessly they were better than anyone else in the world.
I started to toy with the idea of stopping somewhere to get a handi-cam
to balance on the dash, but then a gray Plymouth closed in behind me and
flashed its lights and I forgot all about recording myself.
No point trying to run, he could find me any time he wanted. I drove for
another half mile just to piss him off, then pulled into an overlook that had
been built on a short spur of cliff about fifty feet above the sea. I got out,
stood against the guardrail, and waited for what was coming with an unlit
cigarette in my mouth.
Ryan heaved himself out of his car like a fat woman, twisting sideways
first to swing his feet out. I didn’t bother trying to read his expression,
whatever it was it wouldn’t mean anything good.
“Oh, I love the sea, don’t you?”
 He leaned on his elbows next to me and gazed off across the ocean. His
stomach hung under him like a sack of grain.
“Bet you been thinking about me, haven’t you? Bet you been replaying
that scene at Beauty’s place, me blasting all over your ass. I say it myself, I
carry quite a wad.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Don’t be embarrassed, it ain’t much compared to what you’re into,
right? Speaking of which, I set you up a little treat down at the morgue.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the real thing. Cold and laid out.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. The thought of getting close to a dead
body changed the whole world around me. It dragged me out of the
sunshine dream I’d wrapped myself with on the highway, back into a dark
place of murder and desires I didn’t understand. Ryan put on a cheesy grin.
“Yeah, I thought it was the least I could do considering you got such
shitty friends.”
“Huh?”
“Old Rexy.”
My guts went cold. I lit my cigarette.
“You know what’s coming, don’t you, Jackie boy?”
“You want another payment for the motel thing.”
Ryan snorted. “I guess you had to try. No, this ain’t about that poor
bastard. Don’t you know you can’t trust a junkie?”
“Get on with it.”
“You’re not enjoying this? Gee, I am. Okay, Rex had my number. A
couple of days ago he used it. He had something to sell, and after I saw it I
was happy to buy. I bet you could take a real good guess what it was.”
I didn’t answer.
“No? A tape of our two favorite girlfriends pleasuring each other. Only
about ten minutes long but, boy, does it sizzle. Don’t bother looking vacant,
Rex told me where he got it. You know what it means, don’t you?”
“So they knew each other, big deal. Karen was a whore and Bella likes
sex. It’s not impossible they met.”
“But you and I know it ain’t as simple as that. That tape proves a sexual
connection between a murder victim and a woman whose behavior is
suspect, to say the least. A connection you didn’t want me to know about.
Why was that, Jackie?”
“Just because Bella was fucking her doesn’t mean she killed her.”
“Surgical-type wounds, professional evisceration, a sexual link. It isn’t
what I’d call tenuous. And then there’s you—another connection between
them. You know, Jackie, you oughta be more helpful. It don’t take much of
a leap to put you and this doctor cunt together in a plan. Maybe that’s why
you didn’t let on about the tape.”
“The first time I met Bella was when some faggot trick took me to a
party in Bel Air. Two months after Karen was killed. And the reason I
didn’t tell you about the tape was because I knew you’d jump to some
bullshit like this.”
“You say she didn’t do it?”
“Of course she didn’t. She was in love with Karen.”
Ryan looked measuringly at me. “I know about the operations.”
“Operations?”
“Don’t act dumb, I wouldn’t want to get pissed off on such a nice day.
When I saw the tape I thought it might be worthwhile checking out your
movements after Karen died a little more thoroughly. Remember that bar on
Pico, the Egyptian place? The night you thought it’d be so much fun to try
and lose me? I went back there and spoke to a guy called Joey. Man, you
think you know L.A.” Ryan laughed and shook his head. “So, we got this
Joey in a secret clinic somewhere selling off one of his kidneys. It’s a
bummer the doctor was antsy about being identified and wore a mask and a
gown all the time or we could be a whole lot more certain about things. But
we got a couple of pointers. On account of him having sex with her, Joey
was pretty sure it was a woman. Ain’t that a kick? Just like Bella. Plus,
those gowns do up down the back and Joey couldn’t be completely sure,
because there wasn’t much of a gap, but he thought maybe she had a tattoo
there, something all black.”
“Bullshit. You’re making it up.”
“Now why would you say that, Jackie?”
“He didn’t know anything about a tattoo.”
“Just ’cause he didn’t tell you, don’t mean he didn’t know. You gotta
learn to be more forceful, boy. ’Course I can understand you getting upset
because, correct me if I’m wrong, didn’t I catch a flash of something on
Bella’s back when you fucked her the other day? What was that, exactly?”
“You got me.”
“You telling me you’ve been fucking her all this time and you haven’t
seen anything there? I’m going to find out sooner or later. You might as
well spare yourself some grief.”
“Okay, she’s got a tattoo, so what?”
“I didn’t get much of a look, describe it for me.”
“I don’t know, some kind of beetle or something.”
“Wouldn’t be an Egyptian kind of beetle, would it? Like Karen had?”
Ryan started to laugh, deep belly chuckles like he was immensely
pleased with himself. It took him a while to quiet down.
“Okay, Jackie … Here’s how it looks to me. You ready? Okay, you tell
me that first off Karen went away for a coupla weeks, long enough to have
her kidney cut out, I’d say. Then she turns up flashing way more cash than
she could have got hooking—shit, she even bought you a car. Add that little
scene with her and Bella on the tape and the picture draws itself. Bella’s a
doctor, she’s fucking Karen. Karen wants some extra cash. Bella knows a
way—how am I doing?”
“You’re fucking insane.”
“You better hope I’m not, ’cause the stuff Joey told me you asked him is
the only indication I got that maybe you weren’t involved in the murder.
See, those kinda questions, one way to figure it is you were out looking for
the killer. Now, are you going to level with me about Beauty, or not?”
“All right, all right … Karen did sell her kidney, it’s true. When she
came back to my place she’d already had it done—that’s what we argued
about the last time I saw her. And Bella did the operation, yes. But that
doesn’t mean she killed her.”
“That’s better.”
“It doesn’t mean she killed her, Ryan.”
“Could point to it, though. Karen’s sexing up to Bella and Bella with all
that money—maybe after you and her had your tiff she went back to the
honey pot once too often. Shit, when it came to money she wasn’t what
you’d call shy. Could be she decided her kidney was worth more than she
got. Maybe Bella didn’t see it that way and did something about it.”
 “She’s trying to help people. She pays for the kidneys herself and
donates them to welfare hospitals. Is that the sort of person who kills
someone?”
“Whatever she’s into, it ain’t helping people. I checked her out, Jackie.
She ain’t a surgeon. She’s a doctor, okay, but that’s all. She’s got no more
right to do those kind of operations than you or me. What does that say to
you?”
“That she’s really clever?”
“She’s a fucking psycho. She enjoys cutting people open. Could easily
be she just went a teensy bit too far one day.”
“Couldn’t happen. She doesn’t do the operations by herself. Her father
helps her, and he is a surgeon.”
“Was. Doesn’t mean anything. The operation was done before Karen
was killed. You said so yourself.”
“What about the spunk? Bit difficult for Bella to come up with that.”
“The come don’t necessarily mean anything. Could be someone wanked
into the body after it was dumped. Could be a million explanations. By
itself it don’t rule her out.”
“But it could mean someone else was involved.”
“I just bet you got a suggestion.”
“Her father.”
“I don’t like that suggestion.”
“What do you mean, you don’t like it? The guy’s a junkie.”
“It’s been fifty years since you could hang a murder rap on someone
just because they like to unwind with something stronger than booze. Don’t
get simple on me, Jackie.”
“He’s got a major sex thing going on with Bella. I’m telling you, he
could easily have killed Karen in a fit of jealousy over it. He cuts open dogs
when he gets pissed off. I’ve seen him do it, exactly the same as Karen
was.”
“I got Bella doing the operation illegally—which, by the way, I wasn’t
sure of until you told me, ’cause Joey never actually saw who did the
cutting. I got similar tattoos and I got a tape of them having some girlie fun.
I got nothing between Karen and this guy Powell except what you say. And
forgive me, Jackie, but you got what we call in the business a vested
interest.”
 “But if he’s involved in the kidney thing too, it could just as easily be
him.”
“It wasn’t him in that motel room stopping some guy’s heart.”
Ryan shoved himself away from the rail and headed for his car.
“Come on, I want to give you this present. Things have been working
out pretty good since you and me hooked up. I want to show my
appreciation.”
I didn’t move right away. I watched some gulls circling over a patch of
water and thought about Lorn. All I wanted at that moment was to be with
her in a big bed, in a room filled with sun, the world shut outside and the
smooth whispering of our skin against each other drowning out the shit
Ryan kept forcing me to listen to.
“You don’t want to miss out on this, Jackie, believe me.”
But I also knew I couldn’t turn down what he was offering.
The sun, the water, and the blue air all turned to dust on the way to
Santa Monica. I followed Ryan’s Plymouth south down PCH and prayed for
it to get totaled by a truck.
***

Euclid Street. Memories of Karen on a slab. It seemed like a long time ago,
but then a lot of things had happened.
The sun was low in the sky as we arrived and the haggard palms made
long diagonal shadows across the concrete of the road. We went in the same
way as before, down the side ramp. The front office was shut anyhow. Ryan
was acting like a guy playing Santa Claus.
The body room hadn’t changed—same fluoro light, same coolant
hissing in the same pipes, same TV babble from the attendant’s room. A
place out of time, a place where the temperature and the cool motionless air
never changed, no matter how many days went by outside.
Ryan whistled and the Japanese guy shambled out to meet us. He
looked pleased to see Ryan.
“You got her ready? My friend here’s kinda anxious to start.”
“Sure. She all ready out back. One sweet honey. Say twenny-five, look
real nice. Big tits, but she got a lot of hair on her pussy. I have to shave her
first, but you western guys maybe different. Anyhow, still plenty fresh.
Rigor all gone. Mouth nice and clean so you can kiss her too if you want.”
Ryan handed over a thick fold of cash, the Japanese guy gave him a key
and went back to his TV, unwrapping a candy bar.
“Outside again, Jackie, too much traffic in here. They start coming in
from rush hour soon.”
He led me out of the body room and around the back of the building to a
square concrete construction that looked like it had been tacked onto the
main block as an afterthought.
“This is where they used to keep the blacks in the old days. The only
time it’s used now is when Kung-fu needs a few bucks. Praise the Lord for
more liberal times, eh?”
He used the key on a recessed steel door that was rusting at the corners
and pushed his way inside. The place was windowless and the lights were
already on. Not fluoros but a line of clear low-watt bulbs that hung from the
ceiling on dusty flex and threw an ochre pall down the center of the room.
One wall had the same fridge doors as the main building, but there were a
lot less of them. The other three walls were marked with trails of powdered
plaster that spilled from blisters in peeling green paint. There was a pile of
junk in one corner—old paint cans, a tarpaulin, a few pieces of what was
probably refrigerator machinery. It looked like they used the place to store
shit they couldn’t be bothered to throw away. Today, though, it was going to
serve a different purpose. Ryan locked the door behind us.
On a gurney something lay heavy and still and covered with a sheet.
“She’s all yours, Jackie. Whaddya think?”
He pulled the material away with a flourish, like a stage magician. Big
tits and a lot of cunt hair. I couldn’t argue, she was good-looking all right,
even dead. Along with Karen and the jackhammer girl, this was the third
corpse I’d seen. Maybe it was the familiarity, maybe it was because of the
photos Ryan had given me, but the sight of her didn’t make me feel like
puking or any of the other things you see on TV. Instead it was like when
I’d watched Ryan stroking Karen’s pussy—I wanted to touch her, to see
what her flesh felt like, to run my hands over her belly and the tops of her
thighs. I knew she’d be smoother than any other woman I’d ever been with.
My cock felt like it was carved from stone.
“Look at that fucking beard. Let’s see what’s in the middle of it.”
 Ryan pulled the woman’s legs apart. One of them swung off the edge of
the gurney and made tight rubbery arcs in the air for a few moments. The
motion made her pelvis grind.
“Whoa, look at that. She wants it, Jackie. The bitch is dead and she still
wants fucking.”
In the center of the dense black hair I could see a pale tear-drop of meat,
about the color of skin on a side of beef. I wondered if she’d be slick inside.
A smell came off her, but it wasn’t fish. It was more like the fragrance
cheap soap leaves behind.
Ryan used his thumbs to pull her open, she looked dry. I spat on my
middle finger and pushed it into her. She was tight, but what struck me
more was the cold, synthetic feel of her, like she was some injection-
molded dummy that had never been alive. She had ridges along her cunt
tunnel.
“I bought her just for you, Jackie.”
“You expect me to fuck her?”
“It’s what you want. Might even do her myself after you’ve loosened
her up.”
I pulled my finger out of her hole. Before I could wipe it, Ryan grabbed
my hand and stuck it under my nose.
“Smell that? Know what it is? That’s the smell of what’s inside you,
boy. All the stuff you want to do but don’t. Not because you think it’s bad
or wrong or evil, but because you think you might get caught.”
“You don’t know what’s inside me.”
“Oh, you’re wrong there. I spent too many years looking at people. I’ve
seen the things they want and there’s nothing that sets you apart from them.
Everyone’s the same, only difference is some are less frightened of getting
caught than others. I know you want to do it so stop shitting around. Your
pants look like they’re gonna rip.”
Ryan was right. I wanted to fuck the woman. I wanted to be on top of
that body, pumping away, filling her dead hole with come. And I was going
to do it. Right then there was nothing that could have stopped me. Maybe
Ryan had set it up to seed another blackmail scam, maybe someone was
getting ready to kick in the door and bust me—I didn’t care. In that dingy
light my desire to make real what I’d seen in photos was overwhelming.
 I moved up to her head and looked at her face—white like the rest of
her. Her eyebrows and lashes stood out so starkly they could have been
painted on. Her eyes were closed, her mouth was slightly open and I could
see the glint of teeth. I kissed her. Her lips gave against mine, but they
didn’t spring back, they stayed wherever I pushed them. I forced her mouth
open with my tongue and searched for hers, but it had fallen down the back
of her throat and I couldn’t reach it. Her teeth were sharp and hard, like
small rocks or pieces of bone. I knocked them with my own and her head
felt dull, as though all the spaces in it had been filled with cement.
I took my face away and held her breasts, they moved sluggishly under
my hands, cold bags of flesh. It was weird knowing I could squeeze them as
hard as I wanted and no one would complain—she wouldn’t shout and
Ryan certainly wouldn’t move to stop me. But I didn’t do it, I couldn’t spare
the time, I had to get my dick inside her.
The gurney was too narrow and too high to be any good as a fuck
station so Ryan and I lifted her down. We got the tarp off the junk pile and
spread it out first, though, to stop the dust and bits of grit that covered the
floor from sticking to her back. When we had her ready I took off all my
clothes—I wanted maximum contact. Ryan ran his hand over my ass then
sat on the gurney and took a nitro pill.
I got on her. She felt solid and round, like something I’d fall off if I
wasn’t careful. My weight on her chest made her sigh, a hollow gust of air
that smelled like garbage. Her cunt lips had stuck together again when we
moved her and I had to cover my dick with spit before I could get the first
couple of inches inside. After that it wasn’t too difficult, except that her
pelvis was at the wrong angle and I had to put my arms under her knees and
pull them up to her chest.
The impact of my body made her head loll in quarter circles, back and
forth with each stroke. With her mouth open it almost looked like she was
enjoying herself, but the only sound she made was an occasional gurgle,
like she had something trapped deep in her throat. Her cunt was neutral, it
didn’t accept or reject my thrusts, it was just there, to be used or forgotten.
It felt mostly like a tube of cartilage.
I held onto her as tight as I could and concentrated on sensation, on the
feel of her cold thighs against the sides of my chest, her belly and breasts
under me, the stale hairspray smell of her hair, the taste of her neck, slightly
soapy where it met her shoulders, my dick enclosed in dead tissue. I wanted
to drive myself into her and never forget what I found there.
Some time in, Ryan got down off the gurney and started wanking
himself over her face. He came pretty quickly and I had a close-up of thick
spunk disappearing down her throat. When it was my turn I must have
gotten a little too energetic and disturbed something inside her because
foamy white liquid started boiling over her chin while I was spurting. I
thought maybe she was going to cough herself alive like a drowned person,
but it was just some gassy reaction to the shaking I’d given her, and after it
was over she was just as dead as before.
I put my clothes back on and stood looking down at her, not really
knowing what to do next.
“She liked that, Jackie. Look at her, she’s smiling. Fucking slut. You
take her legs.”
We heaved her back onto the gurney and Ryan wheeled it over to a large
white sink at the far end of the room. A length of hose was connected to the
cold-water tap. He uncoiled it and handed it to me. I didn’t have a clue what
he was doing and by this time I didn’t care, I was feeling a little spaced by
the whole episode.
“I’ve had enough, Ryan.”
“We gotta wash her out first. Stick that end in her cunt.”
He turned the tap on then came around and took over from me, jetted
water into her until it started coming out again in fast swirls that spilled off
the gurney and onto the floor. It reminded me of the first time I’d gigged
with Rex up in the hills—the masked woman strapped into a harness,
blasting douche water out of her ass.
Ryan pulled the hose out and turned it off.
“Okay, get on the gurney and lift her up.”
“Huh?”
“Lift her so she’s standing up. We gotta get the rest of the water out of
her.”
“Fucksake. Let’s just go.”
“It’s part of the deal.”
“Christ …”
Doing what he wanted looked like the fastest way out of there so I
climbed up and got my hands under her arms. As I lifted, Ryan yanked her
legs sideways off the gurney. I almost dropped her and he had to step in and
put his arms around her waist. Her legs splayed on the wet floor, but we
managed to get her pretty much vertical and water ran out of her gash. Ryan
held her open with his fingers so it could happen faster.
“Look, Jackie, she’s doing wee wees.”
When she was empty Ryan turned the tap back on and hosed out her
face. It sounded like she was gargling as her throat filled up. We bent her
over the gurney to drain her, only there was some kind of blockage and
Ryan had to sit on her back to force the liquid out. Bits of food came with
it.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ryan and I split outside the morgue. The episode with the corpse had left
me relaxed and kind of floaty and I didn’t want to head back to Malibu
straight away. I thought about paying Rex a visit and confronting him about
the tape, but there wasn’t much point. It wouldn’t erase what Ryan had
already seen. So I drove down to the water instead and parked on Ocean
Avenue, near where Karen had been found.
The sun was touching the horizon, bleeding orange light across the
water, turning the palms into black cutouts that would have looked good in
tourist photos. The place hadn’t changed, the tramps were still lurching
alcoholicly from one pointless activity to another, the cardboard shelters
still cowered against bushes in the quieter areas.
I phoned Bella to tell her I was heading back and to give her some
bullshit about why I’d been gone so long. She was home from her
Brentwood clinic, but just about to leave—Powell had a donor lined up. She
didn’t have time to speak and told me she’d see me tomorrow. We blew
kisses and hung up.
I sat in the Mustang and thought things over. I’d hoped Bella had
suspended contact with Powell after he’d taken me to watch the kidney
operation, but it seemed now that wasn’t the case. Obviously the lure of a
donor was strong enough for her to forgive him, at least temporarily. But
why should that be? Providing one more kidney for the less fortunate of Los
Angeles couldn’t be reason enough to set aside the anger I’d seen displayed
at Apricot Lane. I was missing something. And with Ryan trying to tie her
into Karen’s murder, that wasn’t a good thing. Knowing in advance what he
might possibly uncover was the only way I’d have a chance to protect her.
I was starting to feel drained from fucking the dead girl. I wanted to go
home to Willow Glen and sleep. Instead, I pointed the Mustang up Wilshire,
scored half a gram in West L.A., and sat in a Taco Bell for a while killing
time and pumping up my blood-sugar levels with cola. When I figured
Bella had had long enough to make it to Apricot Lane, I headed there
myself. On the way I tuned into a radio show that was running through the
various pairings around town.
Kate Moss and Johnny Depp had been seen on Hollywood Boulevard
looking happy and relaxed. Lisa Rinna wanted her long-time fiancé to
marry her or walk. Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow were still beautifully
blond together and almost certainly to wed. Cindy Crawford and her
barman boyfriend had just bought a house. Sylvester Stallone and Jennifer
Flavin, Arnold and Maria, Pamela and Tommy … On and on, beautiful
people doing beautiful things with each other. It depressed me that I wasn’t
one of them. Even though I was clocking up screen time on 28 FPS, I had a
long way to go before anyone would be interested in who I was seeing.
I parked on San Ysidro so Bella and Powell wouldn’t hear my engine, put
the top up, and did some coke. Then I got a tire iron out of the trunk and
walked carefully along Apricot Lane. This far up the canyon they didn’t
have street lights and I was glad about the darkness. Down at the dead-end I
climbed the fence and managed to work the garage door up high enough to
roll under. Inside—the black Jag and Bella’s 850ci.
The steel door to the basement was a bitch to open, especially because I
had to worry about noise, but I got it done eventually and made it into the
corridor on the other side. It wasn’t hard to remember where the
observation booth was—it was the only door that didn’t have a lock. I
turned out the lights and stepped quietly into the small space.
Same bright light through the one-way glass. A body on the table,
skinny, male, and white. Powell sat at one end, behind the head, doing his
anesthetic thing. And Bella worked away in the middle.
This time, though, things had a different feel. Bella moved as swiftly
and as carefully as before, but as the operation progressed the sensuality I’d
seen hinted at during my first visit to the clinic grew into something more
overt. Her hips ground against the edge of the operating table as she cut into
the body, forcing her cunt hard against the chrome steel framework, and
even though it was difficult to tell because of her gown, I was pretty sure
she was pressing her thighs together most of the time. Once or twice she
threw her head back and I thought I heard her moan.
Powell looked like he was wanking. I couldn’t see properly because of
the angle of the table, but when he wasn’t involved with his gas cylinders
his hand dropped between his legs. Unlike Bella, however, it wasn’t the
open abdomen of the donor that interested him—his masturbation was
fueled by his daughter’s own excitement.
An hour later Bella lifted a kidney out into the world. She let it lie for a
while on the man’s chest while she did something inside his guts, then she
picked it up and rubbed off the shreds of membrane that clung to it. I waited
for her to put it in a container and store it in the fridge like before. But that
wasn’t exactly what happened.
She stepped away from the table, pulled her mask down, and examined
the organ closely, not like she was looking for anything in particular, but
like she wanted to absorb as much of it as she could through her eyes. The
surface of it shone under the lights and I could see a delicate network of
dark blood vessels embedded in the pale tissue. It moved in her hand like a
small slippery sack, something that might fly from her grasp if she squeezed
it too hard.
She hiked up her gown and turned to rest her ass against the edge of the
operating table, she was naked underneath and her cunt hair looked like
coal against the halogen burnout of her skin. For a minute she played lazily
with the kidney, running it over herself in slow strokes—across her belly, up
the insides of her thighs, leaving a trail of rosy smears. Then she got
serious, reached between her legs, held the lips of her cunt apart, and began
rubbing it against her exposed meat. Her knees trembled and I heard clearly
a sound in her throat.
Powell had rolled his stool out from the end of the table so he could see
better and was pounding away at his long white cock. But the scene in the
operating room wasn’t a shared experience. Bella was occupied only with
herself, with the sight and feel of the pink organ sliding between her labia
and over her clit. As she pressed harder, red juice ran between her knuckles
and dripped from her wrist.
After a while she started to shudder too much to stay standing. She lay
down on the floor with her knees hard up against her chest. I could see
straight into her cunt. The blood and the small rolls of tissue that were
beginning to break off the kidney made it look like a wound. Her moans
became continuous and her hand started to blur.
At the end of it all she shrieked and jammed the thing inside herself.
Powell lurched upright and spurted seed across the floor, then collapsed
back on to his stool and sat looking at her as though he wanted to get up and
hold her, but knew she would not allow it. Bella lay where she was,
breathing deeply with her eyes closed, stroking the outside of her pussy and
the short curve of kidney that protruded from it. Nothing happened for
maybe thirty seconds then Powell checked a couple of gauges and said
something. Bella stirred, looked around like she wasn’t sure where she was,
then pushed herself to her feet and stood braced against the edge of the
table, head drooping over the donor’s open abdomen. The kidney fell out of
her and landed heavily on the floor. She stared at it until Powell spoke
again, then shook herself, put on a fresh pair of gloves, and started stitching
up the man on the table.
I got out of the observation room, out of the clinic, and walked back to
the Mustang. I didn’t notice what the night was like around me, I was too
busy assimilating.
The story Bella had spun me about helping the homeless with medical
care and low-income people on kidney waiting lists hadn’t really been so
bad as far as murder linkage was concerned, even if the operations were
illegal. But now it was obvious I’d been bullshitted. Cutting “donors” open
to use their kidneys to wank with kind of fucked the philanthropic cover
story she’d used to sucker my acceptance of her extracurricular medical
activities—the organs wouldn’t be much use to anyone after being stuffed
up her cunt. Add the fact that she wasn’t qualified to perform that kind of
surgery and you had a level of suspicion that was up there with Powell’s
doggie antics. Not such a great development when Mister Frightening was
doing all he could to upscale his Malibu contact.
I didn’t feel like hanging around Willow Glen or Malibu by myself, so I
figured I’d make the trip to Rex’s that I’d put off before. My anger toward
him over giving the tape to Ryan had burned itself out, but I still felt a little
face-to-face was called for. I turned the key and L.A. went by outside my
car windows—lush trees under a night sky that glowed with reflected light,
as though the molecules of air over the city had absorbed so much of its
scrabbling desire they phosphoresced with it now of their own accord.
Rex answered his door out of it. As soon as I saw his pinned eyes and his
drooping face I knew I shouldn’t have bothered, there was nothing I could
hope to gain. I couldn’t say anything that would make him my friend again
or that would persuade him to reduce his drug use and save himself from
what he obviously intended to be a terminal degeneration.
I wanted to make him feel bad for hurting me with the videotape, but
there was no way the notion of remorse was going to penetrate the cloud of
smack and disaffection that wrapped his head. Still, I was there, it would
have been a wasted journey if I didn’t at least try.
He gave me a dead look for a couple of seconds at the door then went
into the lounge and sprawled on what was left of the sofa.
“I guess you were gonna show up sometime. Get your whining over
with and get out.”
“You don’t think I’m entitled?”
“You should have paid me more.”
“Giving Ryan that tape could have fucked everything for me.”
“I didn’t give it to him, I sold it.”
“Yeah, I figured, but why?”
“I needed money.”
“Did you watch it first?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I would have given you money. Jesus, man,
we were friends.”
“Because I can’t stand the way you look at me. You think I’m fucking
up, but I’m not. What I’m doing is the only sane response to life in this city.
You’re so fixated with your TV bullshit you’re incapable of seeing it.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds but I knew he wasn’t seeing
me.
“I ought to kick the shit out of you.”
“I wouldn’t feel it. But if you want something else to make you feel
important you could leave some money on your way out. I’d feel what
that’d buy.”
I stood there for a while trying to decide on a course of action. In the
end I gave up, there was no way to get satisfaction. In that kind of situation
words and violence are equally ineffective.
Before I left I tossed a wad of bank notes into his lap. I don’t know why.
Maybe I did it just because I could. Maybe I thought it would shame him. I
don’t know.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Twenty-Nine
Malibu. I hadn’t slept and the room with the French windows alongside the
pool stank of cigarette smoke and strong coffee gone cold. Outside, though,
the sky was a crisp blue—one of the first cool days on the slopes above the
sea—and everything looked fresh. I’d called in sick on a shoot to be there.
Lorn could handle it alone, but it wouldn’t do me much good with the
channel—a measure, I suppose, of how urgent I thought it was that I talk to
Bella about sex with kidneys and Ryan’s latest discovery.
She came home midmorning. If she was surprised to find me sitting
there, covered with ash, watching TV on a set I’d dragged in from
somewhere else in the house, she didn’t show it. In fact, it looked like she
expected to find me there. She settled next to me on the couch, thigh to
thigh, perfect white legs stretching long out of a short black skirt.
“You were there last night. You saw what I did.”
“Sorry about the door.”
“Why didn’t you wait for me? You must have had questions you wanted
to ask.”
“I didn’t want to do it with Powell around. Where is he?”
“Keeping an eye on the recovery. Finding a donor last night was an
attempt to reestablish himself with me. Don’t worry, it won’t work.”
“Your story about giving kidneys to hospitals was a lie.”
“Are you terribly surprised?”
“I’m wondering what else you do that you haven’t told me about.”
“What do you mean?” Bella looked shocked. “I’m not a monster or
some sort of serial killer. What you saw last night is everything.”
“You told me you weren’t qualified as a surgeon. That must go double
for kidneys.”
“Powell is a good teacher, when he’s forced to be. No one is in any
danger. But you want to know why.”
“It would help.”
“I like it. I like doing it. When I take a kidney out of someone I change
them forever. Physiologically it’s far more profound than rape. And it takes
a monumental effort of will—to go against the law, to go against everything
we’re taught about not hurting people. It’s a test. It’s a test of skill. It’s a test
of courage. It’s like I take a torch and shine it into the darkest part of my
soul. Everyone has secret thoughts, thoughts of murder and torture, but they
won’t admit to them. Or if they do they pretend they’re a momentary
aberration, something separate from the person they consider themselves to
be. But we are the sum of our thoughts, Jack, whether we admit to them or
not, and the most potent of those thoughts are the ones we prefer to keep
hidden. I’ve found a safe way to access them, that’s all.”
“It all sounds so reasonable.”
“You’re not convinced?”
“What I saw was too primal for that kind of language.”
“All right. What I said was true, but if you want it in different terms: I
do it because I can’t fucking live without it. Some people like pissing and
whipping and bondage and animals. I like cutting kidneys out and
masturbating with them. It gets me off. It’s the only thing that does what it
does to me. Is that a better explanation?”
“Ryan knows about the operations.”
Bella had been steaming along with her little speech, but that slowed
her down a tad. She looked ill. Her mouth worked silently.
“Not what you actually do with the kidneys, but the whole donor thing.
He pulled me over while I was out yesterday.”
When Bella spoke her voice sounded thin.
“How could he possibly know anything about them?”
“He found a guy you operated on, a bar owner or something. Maybe he
identified you. It wouldn’t be hard for Ryan to get a picture of you
somewhere.”
“I never uncover my face in front of the donors.”
“You did with that girl Karen. If she’s still around somewhere he might
have got it out of her. She saw your face, she knows where you live. Do you
think she might have talked?”
I watched Bella closely as I said this, but her reaction was only what
would have been natural if she thought Karen was alive.
“No. If she’s spent all her money she might try to get more by selling
the information. But she’d sell it to me, she knows I’d give her whatever
she wanted.”
 “At least it figures why he was at your clinic showing pictures of her.”
She put her face in her hands and was silent a while. Then she lifted her
head and looked intently at me. Her eyes glittered with buried excitement.
“Why did he tell you? About the operations. Why would he let you
know he’d found out? He must know you’d tell me.”
“Of course.”
“He’s thinking of blackmail again. That’s all it is. Thank god …”
“That makes you happy?”
“When the alternative is going to jail, yes.”
“It won’t be fifty thousand this time.”
“The more he asks for, the deeper he’ll be getting himself. But I don’t
understand how he found out about the operations in the first place.”
Bella put her head back against the cushions of the couch and stared at
the ceiling. I lit another cigarette and wondered how long it would be until
she caught me in my lies.
A day later Lorn and I finished a piece on a penis-implant clinic and the
more high-profile of its clients. I’d been rocking up in the breaks between
taping and was pretty fritzed, I needed to make it to a bar and booze off the
edges until I could find something more effective. Lorn told me to forget it,
that she had Librium at her place—an apartment in a court off Melrose.
Vodka and pills, one way to kill the end of an afternoon. Another is by
fucking, which we did for the first time in her bathroom after I walked in
while she was finishing up a piss. After that we did it in her bed. The walls
were a collage of magazine cutouts, lacquered so close together there was
no space between them—every Hollywood star under thirty-five. It looked
like the inside of my head.
It goes without saying that screwing the anchorwoman of a show in
which I participated purely as a result of Bella’s influence was a potentially
dangerous thing to do, stupid even. What can I say? It was a hot day, I was
out of it, I’d wanted to fuck her since I met her.
We’d grown closer working together, Lorn and I, after all we had a lot
in common—we’d both lucked into the media and found it the only world
whose reality was worth having. Our humping that day might have been
largely due to boredom and blood chemistry augmentation, but there was
something within each of us that recognized a key part of the other.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Thirty
Bella had fish in a sauce with herbs and a selection of undercooked
vegetables, I had steak and a bottle of wine—all of it prepared by invisible
hands and waiting for us when we came down from upstairs. Candles
burned in the lingering twilight. Our table stood on the flagging between
her house and the pool. The white columns around the water were lit and
the scene made me think of a European set for a Jackie Collins miniseries.
Rome or Monte Carlo, maybe. We crooned endearments to each other.
Until Ryan waddled around a corner, dragged up a chair, and helped
himself to a drink.
“Don’t look so surprised, Beauty. You must have known I’d be paying
you another visit. Got anything else? I don’t like wine.”
“You shouldn’t be drinking.”
“It’s nice you’re concerned, but save the doctor shit for the suckers who
don’t mind losing a kidney.”
“Jack told me you had the strangest notion.”
“Notion nothing. You’re performing illegal operations. There’s no two
ways about it.”
“You have a videotape?”
“I got a witness.”
Bella laughed.
“Maybe he can’t pick your face, but that don’t make what he saw any
less useable. Leastwise for me. How does an Egyptian beetle sound? Right
in the small of your beautiful back?”
“It sounds like something anyone with the price of a tattoo might have.”
“I don’t want to flatter you unduly, but not a lot of people have a body
like yours. I guess my witness would recognize it if we stripped you down
in front of him. The way he tells it he got a pretty good look. And then
there’s the guy who picked him up. Distinctive silver hair, easy to ID. I
checked some old newspaper photos back when your father had that
accident with your mom. He was gray even then. Plus, he wasn’t wearing a
mask when he talked my friend into selling his kidney. You got a black Jag
registered in your name?”
“No.”
“How about Dad?”
“No.”
“Yeah, I already checked. But I bet if I went looking it wouldn’t be too
hard to find. Might even be in the garage here.”
“Have a look.”
“I don’t need to, do I? You already know I got enough. So, here’s the
plan …”
It wasn’t what either of us was expecting. It wasn’t just money. It was
way worse than that. On top of a million bucks, he wanted to come and live
at Malibu. He wanted to share our lives.
“Not forever, of course. A coupla months, say. Shit, the place is big
enough, it’s not like we’d be in each other’s pockets. Don’t you think it’d be
fun? We could all go out places together. Whaddya say?”
“Why on earth would you want to do that?” Bella’s voice was cold.
“Well, see, when you give me that million I can’t exactly go out and
start blowing it, can I? Not a fifty-year-old cop. People would talk. But with
you I can walk into any place and all they’ll think is I got lucky with my
cock.”
“You don’t need to live here for that.”
“But it’d be so much nicer. See, what I want is the same thing I figure
old Jackie here wants—Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. You know?
Restaurants, premieres, charity parties like Steven Spielberg goes to. Those
kinda things you need connections. And I know you got connections,
Beauty.”
Bella didn’t have much choice, she knew he had enough to fuck her up.
So she said yes—yes to the million, yes to him living at Malibu. And she
didn’t say no when he put his hand between her legs and started stroking
her thigh.
Later, Ryan split for home, saying he’d pick up some things and move
in tomorrow. I walked down to the gate with him. He’d had to haul his fat
ass over it to get in without us knowing, and his car was parked on the road.
“What are you doing, Ryan?”
“Gee, Jackie, I thought I explained. Beauty looked like she got it.”
 “You know what I mean.”
“You can figure the money, but not the moving in.”
“Unless it’s just to piss me off.”
“You know what a hidden agenda is? Like the politicians have? That’s
what I got.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I ain’t forgotten Karen. That bitch up there is hiding
something and the closer I am to her the easier it’s going to be to find out
what it is.”
“Isn’t that shooting yourself in the foot? Look what she’s giving you.”
“I liked Karen.”
“I could tell Bella what you’re up to.”
“And I could tell her about you. I bet she don’t know you two were
married. I bet you ain’t even told her you knew each other.”
“Of course I haven’t.”
“So if I tell her different she won’t like you so much maybe. Don’t be
dumb, Jackie. There’s no point in fucking each other up before we have to.
You want something out of her? I don’t have a problem with that. As long
as you don’t get in my way.”
Ryan winked and got into his car. Before he pulled away he wound
down the window like he’d just remembered something.
“I checked what you said about the kidneys, that she gives them to
welfare hospitals? Don’t happen. There ain’t that many on this side of L.A.
and none of them ever received anonymously donated organs. I hope you’re
playing straight with me, Jackie boy.”

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 Chapter Thirty-One
So a pretty bizarre time started. Bella put Ryan in a suite on the other side
of the house, gave him a suitcase full of money and a set of keys. During
the day things ran on the same as they always had—Bella hit her
Brentwood clinic a couple of afternoons a week and I backed up Lorn on
reports for 28 FPS and did a few solo slots. Ryan got on with whatever pig
business he had happening at the time. But downtime, that’s when the new
situation really showed itself.
Bella’s preference was to stay home most nights, but Ryan was hot to
get a taste of society. So every evening those first few weeks the three of us
were out dining and turning up at glitzoid parties from the Malibu beach
front to the Hollywood hills. I didn’t mind the socializing, it was all more
California to me, but the way he jammed himself next to Bella was a major
pisser.
I didn’t spend much time at Willow Glen around then. I didn’t feel
comfortable with the idea of Ryan and Bella alone together, consequently I
had to suffer the greater part of his onslaught. The time after our outings
was generally the sickest—him, Bella, and me in a knot on the floor, or bed,
or by the pool, or wherever else the connection occurred, grunting away at
each other in a kind of incestuous frenzy. Bella had let him fuck her as soon
as he moved in and Ryan had never looked back. He sweated and popped
nitro and rolled around in an ecstasy of dreams come true. And didn’t notice
that Bella lay underneath him completely self-contained, unaffected by his
penetrations, even by his presence in the house, it seemed.
Sometimes I’d leave them to it, rock up some coke in the microwave,
and smoke it out in the garden. Other times I’d sit and watch them writhe.
Ryan got a lot out of the sex—a beautiful woman with an incredible amount
of money, she was as much a badge to him as she was to me.
“Aren’t we two lucky guys?”
We were alone drinking coffee by the pool. Bella was out and Powell
still hadn’t shown his face at Malibu since the first kidney operation. Ryan
wore a white toweling robe and sat close to me. I could see fine black hairs
against the pallid skin of his calves.
“Whaddya say, Jackie, are we sitting pretty, or what?”
“She isn’t stupid, she’ll figure out why you’re here.”
“If she’s guilty she’s gotta know already. But what’s she gonna do? Call
the police? Take my money back? Don’t worry, Jackie. Her running scared
will only be good for us.”
“For you. It won’t do me a shit of good.”
Regular sex must have softened him because he smiled then like he
really didn’t want me to feel so bad.
“Look, I gotta admit I’m getting kinda fond of Beauty. I’m not going to
do anything unnecessary.”
“Fond? You’re blackmailing her, for fucksake.”
“Things don’t always finish the way they start. I think she’s into me
too.”
“Oh, Jesus …”
“Hey, you don’t fuck the way she does without feeling something.”
“I guess you’re not after her for Karen anymore, then.”
“I said I wouldn’t do anything unnecessary, but if she’s the one, then
she’s the one. But I been thinking about what you said about her father. It’d
be a nice solution—Bella skates, you’re happy, I’m happy, justice gets
done, the money keeps coming … Persuade me.”
So off we went, Ryan still in his robe, tramping through the
undergrowth at the edge of the grounds. Until we found the carcass of a
dog. By then it was just a collection of eaten-out bones wrapped in skin.
“I found another one the first time I came here.”
Ryan squatted beside it and poked it with a stick.
“Sorry, Jackie, this don’t tell me much. It’s too far gone. Impossible to
determine the exact nature of the wounds. You say they were the same as
Karen’s, but then you would.”
“Doesn’t it tell you something about him? Bella said he does it when he
gets jealous—”
“We must be pissing him off plenty then.”
“Are you listening to me? A guy who does this because his daughter’s
fucking someone obviously has a major problem. Don’t you think it’s
conceivable it could have something to do with what happened to Karen?”
 “It’s a dog, Jackie, not a person. And we got nothing to say he knew
anything about Karen at all. I’m not saying he didn’t, but we got no proof.”
“Fucksake! They do the operations together, he would have to have
known about her.”
“But only as someone selling their kidney. And Joey’s living proof that
being a donor don’t have to mean you wind up dead. Beyond what you say,
there’s nothing that gives him knowledge of any affair between them. So we
got no jealousy motive.”
“Bella’s into videoing stuff, right? You got that tape of her and Karen.”
“So?”
“So she told me Powell sneaks copies of all her tapes. If he has a copy
of the one you’ve got, it’d mean he knew about the affair.”
“It still wouldn’t prove he killed her.”
“But it’d point in that direction.”
“Maybe.”
Powell’s suite at the house was paneled in wood. It had olive carpets and
brass fittings like a gentleman’s club. Ryan went through it without making
any attempt to hide his tracks. What we wanted, though, wasn’t hard to
find. In plain sight in the bedroom, a wall-mounted rack held an exact
duplication of Bella’s video collection. Ryan worked his way through them.
He saw me unconscious getting my dick sucked, he saw me performing
actively in a more recent tape. He went slowly through the donor tape,
trying to recognize faces of unsolved homicides as Bella performed her
examinations.
“I gotta say, Jackie, this ain’t helping Bella any. She’s getting off on it.
That plus the kidneys just disappearing don’t inspire confidence.”
I took the remote off him and fast-forwarded to the section with Bella
and Karen.
“There. You can’t say he didn’t know about an affair between them
now.”
“Depends if he got it before or after the murder. If it was after it don’t
mean shit.”
“I don’t fucking believe this.”
“Hey, Jackie, I’m trying, but I gotta consider all angles, especially in a
situation where a man’s liberty is at stake.”
 I handed Ryan the last tape on the rack. I knew what it would be and I
didn’t know whether he’d read it as for or against Bella. But there wasn’t
much I could do to stop him watching it.
Bella and Powell fucking, a selection of their sessions together.
“Oh, Jackie, what have we got here?”
“Daddy’s favorite pastime.”
“Look at the old bastard go.”
“He’s obsessed with her.”
“Hey, with a body like hers, who wouldn’t be? If you’ve been saving
this to ace me with, I’m surprised at you. You should know me better than
to think a little incest would shock me into jumping on him.”
“You’re doing this to fuck me up, aren’t you? You don’t want it to be
Powell. Because if it isn’t him, then it has to be Bella. And if it’s Bella and
you take her down, I lose everything. What does it take to satisfy you? You
want to destroy me? Why? You must know by now I didn’t have anything
to do with Karen’s death.”
Ryan killed the tape and turned to look at me. For the first time since I’d
known him, he looked sincere. More than that, in fact, he looked conflicted.
“Jackie, it hasn’t got anything to do with you, boy. I’m being straight.
You think I want it to be Bella? Shit no. I like living here, and you know I
like fucking her. Add to that she’s a goldmine I haven’t even scraped the
surface of yet and I’d be insane to fuck her up for no reason. But I gotta
have someone for Karen and I gotta feel confident it’s the right person.
Sure, there’s shit about Powell that looks plenty suspect, but without
something to tie him directly to Karen it’s just dead dogs and nudey pix.
With Bella we got a definite connection and we got stuff that’s just too
weird to ignore. I don’t know what the story is with the kidney thing yet,
but those examinations make it look like some kinda sex trip for her. And if
that’s what happens when she’s checking them out, what the fuck happens
when she’s cutting? You said Powell’s involved too, but it ain’t him sticking
his fingers into those people on the tape. And it wasn’t him in that motel
room. Shit, that was almost a murder right there.”
“She didn’t kill Karen.”
“I hope you’re right, I really do, but unless you can find me something
more than Fido out there, you better start looking for another source of
income because the one you got ain’t gonna last.”
I went back to Willow Glen later that day. Alone, I looked at my pictures
and remembered the feel of the dead woman in the morgue. I wished I
could have taken a photo of her to help me. Better, I wished I had a video of
us doing it that I could splice into a Calvin Klein commercial. The dead and
the living together—hard to think of either of them as important if their
images aren’t recorded and available for viewing. I spurted, then took some
pills and fell asleep thinking about Lorn. We shared an obsession with a
better way of life. In Los Angeles that was probably as good as love.

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 Chapter Thirty-Two
Life goes on. Short of suicide there isn’t much you can do about stopping it.
Knowing Ryan was watching and waiting and counting the minutes until he
could take Bella out of the game kept me in a state of permanent anxiety.
But not everything that happened around then was bad.
On 28 FPS my share of screen time took a small hike as market
research indicated acceptance of my face and personality by the target
audience. The mid-twenties son of a snack-food magnate caught one of my
slots and suggested me to his father. As a result I got ten grand for a couple
of rushed fifteen-second commercials that screened on the cheaper local
stations—the first money I’d earned in a visual medium without someone
else’s help. The ads were good for exposure, but I worried about being
trivialized.
Meanwhile, Ryan and Bella played their respective games. He for
Karen’s revenge and a lifestyle he never thought he’d have, she for god
knows what reason. They fucked, they talked, and, despite his mission to
destroy her, I could see his infatuation grow. But she sat a long way back
behind her eyes when she was with him, calculating things I couldn’t
fathom.
I carried my photos with me now most places I went. Wanking over
them gave me a kind of relief from worrying about the end of money and
TV-time that Ryan’s plotting against Bella seemed destined to bring about.
But the relief was only temporary, and as time passed my anxiety built to a
point where I knew I had to either act or perish.
I formed a plan that required a confession to Bella and the sacrifice of
another human being. Neither were things I would have involved myself in
voluntarily, but I no longer had the freedom to choose. The taste of the high
life I’d had made it impossible for me to give up the chance at becoming
someone special without a fight.
Out in the workplace Ryan was busy closing cases in preparation for a
move to retirement. Some nights he worked late. On one of them I took
advantage of his absence.
 A small exclusive restaurant by the sea, a table by the window, just
Bella and me in the early twilight. There were reasons for doing it like this.
Her breeding would prevent a screaming match in public, Lorn and I had
interviewed Laura Leighton there about her days as a waitress and I figured
the manager might recognize me and dish out a little preferential treatment,
and if everything did have to end I wanted this memory of California to
take with me—an expensive place, beautiful people, soft light, gentle music
from the trio in the corner, a view of the ocean, my reflection in the glass,
beautifully dressed.
I was clear-headed. No pills or powder, just a Wallbanger—vodka,
orange juice, Galliano—a taste that made me think of summer nights for
some reason. The cuff of my shirt looked crisp as I raised the glass to my
lips, my nails were manicured. Bella glittered. Men at other tables glanced
at her. She smiled at me.
“This is nice, darling. But I sense something.”
“Do I look that nervous?”
“You’re not going to ask me to marry you, are you?”
She laughed in a way that made me think the subject might be open to
discussion if I wanted to pursue it. But small talk was only going to make
things worse, so I jumped straight in.
“You’re in danger. Ryan thinks you killed someone and he’s trying to
frame you for it.”
She gave me a blank look for a couple of seconds, then a puzzled smile
like I was joking.
“I’m not sure I heard you properly.”
“Karen. The girl in your video. She was killed about four months ago.
They found her in a park in Santa Monica and Ryan thinks it was you.”
She knew I was serious now. She pressed her lips hard together. She
didn’t start crying, but most of the blood left her face.
“That can’t be right. How can you be certain it was the same girl? I
don’t understand.”
“It’s very hard for me to tell you this …”
I took a swallow of my drink, it didn’t taste like summer anymore. It
didn’t taste like anything.
“There are things about the way she was killed that Ryan thinks point to
you.”
 “I asked you how you know it was the same girl.”
Her voice was cold and there was an anger in her eyes that wasn’t going
to let me skate.
“Jesus Christ, Bella, I’m sorry … I used to go out with her.”
She froze.
“You mean you had an affair with her? You were lovers?”
“It didn’t last long. It finished months before she was found. But she’d
used my address once when she got busted for hooking and they traced me
through it. They suspected me for a while.”
“They meaning Ryan, I assume. He really is a policeman, then?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when you saw her on the tape?”
“I thought you’d think it was all too much of a coincidence. You know,
me and her being together, then her being your lover and dying, then me
turning up … I thought you might think there was something planned in it
and I didn’t want to risk losing you. Then, when I realized you thought she
was still alive, it just seemed easier to forget the whole thing and keep my
mouth shut. Until Ryan turned up, of course.”
“I thought the episode at the motel was a little too pat.”
“Yeah, he’d been keeping tabs on me since the murder. I should have
told you when he started the blackmail thing, I know, but I never thought
it’d go this far. I had no idea he’d try and connect you to the murder.”
“So you lied to me.”
“There was no way I could explain Ryan without telling you about
Karen. Christ, Bella, I didn’t want any of this to happen, it all just kind of
snowballed around me. I wanted it to stop, but it kept getting worse and
worse and there was nothing I could do about it. If I could change things I
would, but I can’t.”
Bella studied me. I must have laid it on thick enough because after a
few seconds she reached across the table and put her hand on mine.
“But what made him think I had anything to do with killing her? Is it
because you and I are together?”
“It’s more than that. He knows you took her kidney out, so he’s got the
two of you linked in something illegal. On top of that, her body was cut
open and eviscerated. Professionally, like a surgeon would do it. He figures
she came to you and sold her kidney, then sometime later you killed her.”
 “He’s insane. I removed her kidney, but she left in perfect health. I
didn’t see her again. Are you sure you’re telling me everything?”
“What do you mean?”
“He knows about my operations and he knows you had a relationship
with Karen, but how could he possibly know she was one of my donors?”
“After she died he checked around and found out that before it
happened she’d been boasting about making all this money from selling her
kidney. He checked further and found his ‘witness,’ and that led to your
tattoo. And, unfortunately, Ryan was apparently a client of Karen’s, so he
knew she had the same design. That’s all it took for him to figure you two
had history.”
Bella looked genuinely shaken. She ran her hands along the edge of the
table, smoothing the tablecloth over and over. Then, as though suddenly
drained of all energy, she dropped them into her lap.
“What am I going to do? I didn’t kill her, but I won’t survive an
investigation. The operations alone would ruin me. Will he take more
money?”
“He’ll take it, but it won’t fix things. Karen’s death is personal to him
for some reason and he won’t let it go. But if you listen to me and try not to
freak at what I say, I think there’s a way out.”
“A way to make him see it wasn’t me?”
“Not exactly. Jesus, I don’t know what you’re going to say to this … I
swear I wouldn’t suggest it if I could think of anything else at all.”
“Go on.”
I took a deep breath.
“I’ve been looking at things and thinking about things and it seems to
me there could actually be a connection between the kidney operations and
Karen’s murder. Not you, like Ryan thinks, but Powell.”
“You think Powell killed Karen?”
“If you were having an affair with her, he had to know about it, right?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, and I know from experience how much he hates you to be with
anyone else. Isn’t it possible your affair pushed him over the edge? That he
got so twisted about it, the only thing he could do was kill her?”
Bella was straight in her chair and her eyes were narrow. I took it as a
good sign.
 “He’s obsessed with you, and more than that he used to be a surgeon,
easily capable of inflicting Karen’s wounds. I think he killed her in a
jealous fit, then removed her insides to hide the fact that she’d recently had
her kidney removed. For Christsake, he cuts up dogs exactly the same way.”
I stopped and sipped some of my drink. It tasted better.
“What do you think?”
Bella spoke slowly.
“It’s possible … That bastard … All this time I thought she’d left me.”
She drifted for a while. The waiter brought me another drink and took
away our untouched food. Then Bella snapped back.
“Your solution is to give Powell to Ryan.”
“If he killed her he deserves to pay for it. Assuming you’re willing to
take that step.”
“Have you talked to Ryan about it?”
“I told him about the dogs and the jealousy. He knows Powell’s
background—the drugs, his medical training.”
“Was he receptive?”
“He didn’t think it was enough.”
“I’d hardly call it a solution, then.”
“It will be if we can find some proof. Shit, you’ve seen the way Ryan
looks at you. Sweet-talk him. He says he wants to take you down, but I
think secretly what he really wants is to find a way around it. Explain about
Karen, who she was, what she meant to you. Lay it on about Powell’s
jealousy. It won’t take much. Meantime, I’ll try and find a tie between
Powell and Karen. There has to be something. All we need is one piece of
evidence.”
“I hope you’re right, Jack. If you’re not, both of us could lose
everything.”

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Thirty-Three
On the strength of my TV exposure over the last few months I got an agent.
They had offices high up in Century City, nice and flashy and reassuringly
successful—you could see the Fox studios from them. I didn’t tell Bella
anything about it. With the unstable state of things at Malibu it seemed
smart to lay the foundation for an alternative future. Also, after the earlier
increase, my share of air time on 28 FPS had hit a plateau. The channel
allowed Bella only so much for her money, and from the planner on the
wall of the production office it was plain I’d reached that limit already. A
few more people recognized me on the street, but I didn’t think many of
them wanted to be me yet. I hadn’t had the steamroller exposure necessary
to become part of their desires.
So, fronting for a major product—something expensive and fashionable
—looked like the best remedy. You didn’t have to put in the legwork you
would for a part in a movie and you didn’t have to establish the kind of
marketable personality the TV shows demanded. All that had to happen was
some casting guy liked your face and away you went. Not as heavy-duty as
movies or a show, but a real quick way of getting seen. And with Bella
balancing on a knife edge, speed seemed most definitely to be of the
essence.
Right at that moment, though, the agent didn’t have anything for me and
I had to content myself with whatever slots I was tossed on 28 FPS and the
occasional photo that appeared when the gossips had a slack week and had
to cull visuals from the minor league. And even then I was usually riding
Lorn’s coat-tails, accompanying her to some function and standing too close
to crop out when the bulbs went off.
The fuck we’d had at her place had repeated itself several times during
the intervening weeks. Our connections occurred in those hidden times
when the two of us being alone together wouldn’t raise eyebrows—in our
trailer while everyone else was setting up outside, on the backseat of a limo
when we splashed out and hired one to attend some career-furthering do. I
would have liked to have done it more often but the fear of Bella finding
out put a serious dent in my motivation. And besides, the opportunities
were becoming limited as I couldn’t stop myself scurrying back to Malibu
immediately after each taping session like some hack reporter waiting for a
disaster story to break. Even when we did manage a bit of action, it wasn’t
what you’d call emotionally satisfying. I thought of my humping at those
times as an act of evacuation, like I’d stored up pus from the anxiety
pervading Malibu and the only way to get rid of it was to spurt it into Lorn.
I don’t know if she noticed, maybe she thought it was just the way I
fucked. When we’d finish she’d stare out the window with a look on her
face that made me think what she saw out there and the fucking we’d just
completed bored her equally. At these times it wasn’t hard to imagine some
essential part of her was missing.
Nevertheless, one day while we were waiting to interview Willem
Dafoe as part of a piece on Hollywood guys with good hair, she asked me if
she could crash the night at my place. We’d never gone further with each
other’s life histories than that first conversation on the steps of the porn
star’s house, and she didn’t know anything about Bella or the role she’d
played in getting me the 28 FPS gig. Explaining it all and outlining how
dangerous it would be to allow her so close to home right then would have
taken more energy than I was prepared to expend. So I refused and made up
some bullshit about being a very private person. She listened to me with
less attention than she’d give a weather report.
The pool at Malibu had a spa built into one end. Bella, Ryan, and I sat in the
bubbling water one afternoon, naked and wearing sunglasses. Ryan and I
poured drinks from a bottle of Southern. I tried a cigarette, but the water
kept splashing up and getting it wet.
Bella sat opposite Ryan with her legs apart. He had the start of a hard-
on.
“Jack tells me you suspect me of murder.”
Ryan wasn’t fazed. We hadn’t spoken about it, but he must have known
I’d tell her. The fat on his chest jiggled in the swirling water. I wanted to
leave it all up to Bella, but I had to cover my ass, I couldn’t have him
blowing the lies I’d told her. I talked fast.
“She didn’t do it, I thought she should know. I told her about the short
affair I had with the girl. I told her how you used to suspect me.”
 “Oh, yeah, that short affair you had …”
He hid his smirk behind his glass. I leaned back and rested my head on
the tiles. Blue sky, the occasional cloud, inland the tiny black speck of a
hawk circling. I closed my eyes and wished I was a thousand miles away.
Bella took over again.
“I didn’t have anything to do with her death, Ryan. In fact, I didn’t
know she’d been killed until Jack told me.”
“It’s a nice afternoon. The water feels good, nice company, good booze
—if you want to tell me something, I couldn’t think of a better time to do
it.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How did you meet?”
“Not in the usual way. I mean, it wasn’t because she wanted to sell her
kidney, she didn’t know anything about that. She was a prostitute. I picked
her up on Santa Monica Boulevard one night. We had sex. I was attracted to
her and I asked her to see me again. Over time we developed a relationship.
We fell in love.”
“Musta had some pretty hot nights.”
I heard Bella sigh with annoyance and I opened my eyes. She was
sitting higher in the water and her breasts showed above it. “She visited
regularly, she’d stay for several days at a time.
She said she lived with some awful man in Venice but I never found out
where, she wouldn’t talk about herself. I think coming here was an escape
for her.”
“She said he was awful, huh?”
I avoided the glance Ryan threw at me.
“That was the impression I got.”
“Go on.”
“She wasn’t high-class. She worked the streets, she had a drug problem
—but perhaps I’m telling you something you already know.”
“I could listen to you forever.”
“She always needed money. I gave her some, but it never made any
difference, she always needed more the next time I saw her. One day she
told me she had to buy a car. I suggested she sell her kidney.”
“Why didn’t you just give it to her? You got enough.”
 “I was afraid if I gave her that much she’d either overdose or end up
getting killed for it. I thought if she had to go through an operation and give
up a kidney she might value the money enough to be more careful.”
“Gee, it’s nice how you rich people look after us poor folks.”
“I cared about her. I didn’t want to see her ruin herself.”
“I’m touched. Go on with the kidneys”
“She jumped at the chance. I paid her well. Thirty thousand dollars.”
“And?”
“And nothing. After the operation she stayed here for two weeks, then
she said she had to visit home. I didn’t want to let her go, but she promised
she’d come back. There was nothing I could do to make her stay. I never
saw her again.”
“Didn’t she have stitches or something? Wouldn’t they need to be
removed?”
“They dissolve by themselves. She should have been monitored, of
course, but …”
“And you didn’t see her again? Not even once?”
“No. I remember the day she went. She’d hocked all her jewelry
sometime before—for drugs, I suppose—and I gave her an antique gold
bracelet. She liked it very much. Do you remember if she was wearing it
when she was found?”
“What I remember is the hole where her guts should have been.”
“I only took a kidney.”
“Then who took the rest?”
“My father.”
“Now there’s a surprise. Jackie’s been trying to sell me the same deal.
Where is this Powell guy, anyhow? He’s got rooms here, but he’s never
around.”
“He’s unhappy about my relationship with Jack. He has an apartment
downtown.”
“You mean he doesn’t drop around for the odd fuck when I’m not
here?”
Bella looked sharply at me, but Ryan carried on before I had to say
anything.
“Jackie showed me your video collection. Don’t blame him, though, he
thought it’d help you.”
 “Then you’ll understand why Powell might have an objection to me
taking a lover. You know about his mutilation of dogs, you know he used to
be a surgeon. Can’t you make the connection? My relationship with Karen
was significant. Doesn’t it seem at least plausible to you that a man who has
an erotic fixation with me might snap and commit murder to remove
someone he sees as a rival?”
“Yeah, but it could just as easily have been you had a lover’s spat with
Karen and butchered her yourself. I’m not saying it was one way or the
other, but if you want me to believe it was your father, you’re going to have
to show me more than your spread pussy in a Jacuzzi. Speaking of which,
you got any more videos of Karen getting all sexy?”
“You’ve seen everything in my video suite?”
“Everything in that cute hidden cupboard.”
“That’s all I have. Karen felt uncomfortable being filmed. The only
segment I ever took of her is the one you’ve already seen.”
After that nobody said anything for a while, the water bubbled, and
Ryan and I had another drink. Then Bella spoke again.
“I have a question for you, Ryan.”
“You only gotta ask.”
“Why did you never mention you knew Jack?”
A question like that could only mean she wasn’t entirely certain I’d
been telling her the truth about my connection with Ryan, maybe even
about my connection with Karen. And asking it in front of me meant she
wanted me to know it. Ryan stayed silent for a moment like he was
considering his answer, doing it to make me sweat, no doubt.
“We’re dealing with a murder. To anyone who knew anything about it,
Jackie plus me equals Karen. I would have been stupid to give that away so
early in the game.”
Bella looked unconvinced. But under the circumstances it was the best I
could hope for.
She kissed me on the cheek, got out of the spa, and walked nude into
the house.
“Saved your butt there Jackie boy.”
We stayed in the water while the afternoon decayed. There wasn’t much
else to do, so I drank enough Southern Comfort to get mildly drunk.
That night, for the first time, Ryan got to sleep with Bella. Not just a fuck,
but the whole eight hours, dusk to dawn, lover style. I looked in on them
once, but the sight of that fat animal nuzzling into her armpit like a gigantic
baby was just too obscene. I took some pills and passed out in another
room.
Ryan slept late the next morning so Bella and I got to have breakfast
alone together. She was waspish and impatient.
“He doesn’t seem particularly interested in Powell.”
“Is that why you let him sleep with you?”
“It was a logical step.”
“Really?”
“I don’t want to go to jail. And you don’t want to lose your TV-time.
We’ve got to take care of this thing, Jack. You’ve got to see the big picture.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Good. He needs something concrete to persuade him, talk isn’t
working.”
“Like what? We’ve been through Powell’s rooms.”
“Here.”
Bella handed me a key ring. There were three keys on it.
“Building, elevator, apartment door. Powell phoned earlier—he’s found
another donor. We’ll be operating this evening, his apartment downtown
will be empty. Take Ryan and search it.”
Around midday Ryan surfaced in fine spirits, in fact he was almost
bouncing. I figured he was so unused to love that the pseudo emotion Bella
had dished out through the night must have made him think someone cared
about him. He wanted to go shopping and he wanted me for company.
Only it wasn’t your usual department-store shopping. It took a couple of
hours trekking from showroom to showroom, but at the end of it Ryan was
the owner of a late-model, slightly used convertible Bentley turbo coupe. I
didn’t see what he paid for it, but it must have been a significant chunk of
the million he got from Bella. It made me wonder how soon he’d be asking
for another installment.
We went cruising and the car turned heads. It felt good to know people
were thinking I was someone important.
 A little after three we parked outside a high school on Fairfax Avenue.
The sidewalk was busy with kids heading home. Ryan was in predator
mode.
“Always wanted to do this, how about you? Sure you have. What guy
hasn’t, huh? What we gotta look for is two together so they feel safe. Slutty
types, you know? The class bitches. Nothing over fifteen, though.”
Kids were checking the car. Young males whistled, the older ones
wanted to trash it. Two girls passed by wearing tight T-shirts and lycra
shorts. They looked like maybe they just got out of gym class. Both of them
were smoking and wearing makeup. Best friends for sure, the kind that
shared adventures. Definitely not virgins.
They saw the car, our clothes, our wrist watches, and there was a subtle
change in attitude, in the way they held themselves, the way their walk
became exaggerated and their tits stuck out. Ryan slipped into drive and
kept pace with them.
“You girls wanna lift?”
They giggled and kept walking.
“No, come on, I’m serious. Look at the car. You think we’re maniacs or
something?”
Ryan was half leaning across me, speaking in a light friendly voice I’d
never heard before. The girls whispered to each other and stopped. Ryan
nudged me.
“We just come in from outta town. We got plenty of money. Wouldn’t
mind spending some of it on a couple of girls as good-looking as you two.
You know how to have a good time?”
“How much money?”
“Hey, whatever it takes.”
They whispered together. Getting into a car with a couple of men wasn’t
a problem, it just had to be priced right.
“Five hundred,” one of them said, like maybe she was asking for too
much.
“Each? Sure. But what do we get for that?”
“Anything, but we gotta be home by six.”
Into a motel on the edge of Hollywood where no one gave a shit about
questions of age difference. Coke, booze—the chicks got wild and naked.
Their bodies were smooth and slim, the hair on their cunts was silky. Ryan
was right, every guy wants to.
We fucked one each. Mine had long blond hair and a few zits on her
chin. She looked good, though. She looked like she spent a lot of time at the
beach. I couldn’t believe how firm her body felt.
Afterward, Ryan wanted entertainment. The girls were coy, but he
named figures until they agreed to take a dump on the bathroom floor. We
jerked off over them while they were straining. My come was thick this
time around and stuck to the back of the other one, a little way up from her
ass.
“Jesus, I feel loose.”
The girls were in a cab somewhere, counting their money, and we were
in Ryan’s obscene car gliding downtown to Powell’s apartment.
“Don’t you worry about doing stuff like that? I mean, they were pretty
young.”
“Shit, Jackie, you oughta spend more time in the real world. Another
birthday or two, they’ll be standing on street corners. Ungrateful fucks.”
“What?”
“Forget it.”
I glanced at Ryan. He had a bitter look on his face that didn’t make
sense after the fun we just had back at the motel. He stayed silent a while,
concentrating on driving. Left off of Fairfax, then Wilshire all the way.
Somewhere around La Fayette Park he took a heart pill and started speaking
again.
“Kids think they know everything. They see how they think something
should be, and they never forgive you if you can’t make it that way for
them. No point trying to explain life ain’t simple like it is on TV, they won’t
listen. Those two cunts are probably the happiest they’ve ever been right
now—two grand between them and laughing about how pathetic it is some
old fart gets off watching them shit. But give ’em a few years and a social
worker, they’ll be moaning how being whores is all Daddy’s fault, like they
woulda been nurses or something if he loved them better.”
“What’s this, your PhD in child psychology coming out?”
“I had a kid once.”
“Bullshit.”
 He stared through the windshield at the evening traffic, but he wasn’t
seeing it.
“Whatever you say, Jackie.”
Only someone as rabid as Ryan would drive a convertible downtown after
dark. Even so, he parked in the basement rather than on the street. I’d
handed over the keys Bella gave me and he used one of them on the
elevator. We stood in the middle of it and watched the numbers change.
“Beauty seems quite gung ho for this idea of Powell being the killer.”
“What do you expect, that she should take the fall herself?”
“Not if she didn’t do it. But there’s usually a bit of reluctance between
family members.”
“If they like each other in the first place. They don’t. He’s hung up on
her cunt, and she hates his guts. It’s not what you’d call a happy-family
scenario. Plus, she blames him for her mother’s death.”
“There better be more to this than some payback kick for Mommy
getting scrunched.”
The apartment was empty and quiet, its décor an exact copy of Powell’s
suite at Malibu. I followed Ryan around while he tossed the place, praying
for a miracle. It came in two doses.
In the drawer of a writing cabinet we found a Polaroid—a dog cut open,
a dick dropping seed into the bleeding split, held by a hand that looked old
enough to be Powell’s.
“See? Exactly how it happened to Karen. She was cut open and
someone—”
“I don’t need it explained, Jackie.”
Ryan looked at the pic for a moment then held it out to me.
“You like this kinda thing. You want it? No?”
He smirked and put it in his pocket.
A room with a big-screen TV gave us the clincher. A selection of videos
—a duplicate collection of the ones we’d already seen in Powell’s Malibu
suite and Bella’s video room. Plus one more. A tape that was new to both of
us. It showed Karen nude on her side, a back view, one leg pulled up,
ramming a dildo in and out. In front of her on the wall there was a mirror
that reflected occasional glimpses of the front of her body as her
movements rolled her in and out of it’s range. The angle of the shot was
tight, but there was enough wood paneling and olive carpet around her to
make the location of the scene unmistakably the apartment in which we
now stood.
The plastic cock looked slippery and her hand moved fast. Sometimes
the crack of her ass pulled open and showed her hole. It was obvious she
was into what she was doing. It was also obvious from her glances over her
shoulder that she was performing to turn someone on. But I found myself
incapable of reacting sexually to this scene of my dead wife having a wank.
Karen had changed from something human to a counter in a game, a piece
of a puzzle, the solving of which would determine my future. Her image on
the screen held about as much interest as a documentary on animals in
Africa. Until something on her wrist shifted and caught the light. I almost
yelped.
“She’s wearing a bracelet.”
“So?”
“It’s the same one she had last time I saw her. It has to be the one Bella
told us about.”
“The goodbye present.”
“Bella said she gave it to her when she left Malibu, the last time they
were together. But she’s wearing it now, in a video that was shot in this
apartment. The only way that could be is if this show happened after the
operation.”
“Maybe she wanted to give Beauty something to remember her by.”
“But that’s it! Bella doesn’t have a copy of this tape; if she did, we
would have found it with her others.”
“Who says?”
“You saw the stuff she had—me fucking her, Powell fucking her, even
her goddamn donors fucking her. If she was going to hide anything, she
would have hidden all of that as well. She was in love with Karen. This
would be top of her playlist, for fucksake.”
“So after she got her kidney cut out, Karen just dropped around to give
the old guy a thrill?”
“She would have spread her legs as soon as he opened his wallet. You
know she would. Maybe it wasn’t the first time, maybe they had history. It
doesn’t matter. What matters is that this tape shows there was some
connection between her and Powell after the operation.”
“It ain’t conclusive.”
“Look at the way she’s fucking herself. She’s got to be pretty well
recovered, and that doesn’t leave a whole lot of time between when this was
shot and when she was killed. I think she had the operation, got well
enough to leave Malibu and come back to see me—we had an argument and
sometime later, whether she had anything going with him before or not, she
connected with Powell. After that there’s two ways it can go. Either she
tried to put the bite on him and his solution to blackmail was to kill her. Or,
what I think’s more likely, he figured as long as she was on the scene his
access to Bella was going to be threatened—she was always going to be
taking his daughter away from him. Either reason works.”
“If Powell shot this tape, why is there no camera here?”
“Jesus fuck, Ryan, it could be in his car, it could be somewhere at
Malibu, he could have thrown it away. Does it matter? You said before, if
there was something to connect Powell with Karen then it’s possible he
could have killed her. What do you call this? It’s a fucking connection, for
Christsake.”
“Calm down, Jackie.”
Ryan rewound the tape and played it again. He watched it silently and I
held my breath.
“Something about this bugs me.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, but something feels wrong.”
He rewound and played it a couple more times, searching the screen for
whatever it was he thought he ought to see.
“Can you imagine how grateful she’s going to be, Ryan, if you make all
this murder hassle go away?”
“You’d love it to be him, wouldn’t you?”
“And you wouldn’t?”
Ryan stared at the TV for a little while longer then killed the set.
“Okay, we’ll see what the old fuck’s got to say for himself.”
“You agree it could be him, then?”
“The only way we’re gonna know is if we DNA him against the spunk
in Karen.”
Back at Malibu I split from Ryan. He was waiting like an expectant
schoolboy for Bella to come home so he could get a bit of action in, but I
knew with a donor she wouldn’t be back for ages. I fired up the Mustang
and headed for Lorn’s place.
I felt good on the drive over. The tape we’d found at Powell’s was better
than anything I could have hoped for. It was going to make all my problems
go away. Ryan would have his killer and wouldn’t be able to lay the murder
jive on me or Bella anymore. And with Powell out of the picture I’d be free
to mine his daughter for all she was worth. The only remaining hassle, of
course, would be Ryan’s presence at Malibu. But, same as I knew Powell’s
spunk would match what they found in Karen, I had a feeling that this
situation would resolve itself too.
Lorn was in the lounge watching tapes of herself when I got there. She was
a little distant at first, still low-level pissed at me for saying she couldn’t
sleep over at Willow Glen. But after a while I managed to smooth the
evening out. We talked about work and movie stars then fucked on the
floor. Later we watched Pumping Iron and lost ourselves in a firestorm of
envy at Schwarzenegger’s rise.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Thirty-Four
It was a nasty scene, four of us in a room full of books and leather furniture
out at Malibu—me, Ryan, Bella, and Powell. Three ganging up on one. I
hadn’t bothered with this room before, there was no TV and the books
weren’t about Hollywood, but right then it seemed perfect for the job at
hand: closed and quiet and waiting for shit to happen. It was raining
outside, nighttime. Our only light was an open fire. Shadows moved around
the walls like birds of prey.
Bella’s donor must have been recovering without complications because
she’d come home before dawn. Daddy, after a phone call from her, followed
in the late afternoon. There had been arguments in Bella’s suite through the
rest of the day, the horrible sound of Powell begging for a physical comfort
his daughter would no longer give. Now he sat slumped in a large chair
gazing malevolently at the fire. He’d been gone from the house so long he
looked out of place, a superfluous individual that nobody wanted around
anymore. He knew something was coming. He’d been told who Ryan was
and how he’d been augmenting his cop salary recently, and only a retard
would have figured the evening’s gathering to be without purpose.
Ryan and I had drinks. I listened to the fire and to the rain and waited
for the beginning of Powell’s end. Ryan stared silently at him for a long
time, but the old junkie was too dosed to squirm like a clean man would.
After a while my favorite policeman got pissed off with the game and
prodded him with the toe of his shoe. Powell’s head swiveled slowly
around.
“I don’t like being kicked.”
“Something else you’d prefer?”
“Are you threatening me?”
“You bet. And I’m good at it, ask Jackie here.”
“You’re a thug.”
“Tell me about Karen.”
Powell looked uncertain and flicked his eyes at Bella, but her helpful
switch was off.
 “She was a donor.”
“And?”
“And she was my daughter’s lover for a time.”
“What exactly was it made that time end?”
“These things run a natural course. I assume they tired of each other.
What are you driving at?”
“I’m driving at her turning up dead after she sold her kidney to you, you
old fuck.”
Ryan’s voice got louder, he leaned forward in his chair like he was
having trouble not jumping on Powell. I figured it must have been an
interrogation technique, it seemed out of place otherwise. Powell looked a
little frightened.
“She was healthy enough and the operation was performed successfully.
It would not have resulted in her death.”
“I know losing her kidney didn’t kill her, fuckhole. I’m talking about
what happened later, that second operation where you took out everything
that was left then dumped her in the park.”
Powell started to get out of his chair. Ryan pushed him back down.
“Uh-uh, pops, we got a way to go yet.”
“Bella …”
Bella’s voice corroded the air about her. “He knows what you did. I
know what you did. You couldn’t bear to see me with someone else, so you
killed her.”
“Bella, darling, what are you saying? You know I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Karen and my mother. You killed them both, you sick bastard. Now
tell him what he wants to know.”
“I was jealous of the girl, I admit that, but I didn’t kill her. And your
mother … Haven’t you forgiven me for that?”
“Never. And I’ll never forgive you for Karen. You cut her up like one of
your dogs and threw her away as though she were so much garbage.”
“Bella, no!” Powell was fast becoming distraught. “You know about the
dogs, they don’t mean anything. Tell him. They don’t mean anything.”
When Bella spoke next her face was cast in steel, like she was daring
him to defy her.
“If it wasn’t you, who was it?”
 Powell worked his mouth, but closed it without saying anything and
Ryan took the reins again.
“I’ve got proof.”
“That’s impossible.”
Ryan lurched out of his chair and stood over Powell, breathing heavily,
his fists balled.
“Why? Because you did such a good job? You figure with all her guts
gone nobody’d know she’d had an operation? And if nobody knew that,
they wouldn’t be able to trace it back to you? Is that what you’re telling me,
motherfucker? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Powell swallowed his fear and spoke calmly and clearly, making an
effort to appeal to Ryan’s rational side. Too bad no one had told him Ryan
didn’t have one.
“I’m telling you it’s impossible you have proof, because I didn’t do it.”
“Really. Let’s talk about home movies. One in particular—Karen doing
a turn with a dildo. Nice angle on her ass. Taken, coincidentally, in your
apartment.”
“I know the one.”
“You oughta. You fucking made it.”
“I copied it from one of Bella’s. She’ll tell you.”
“What Bella tells me is she never had a tape like that.”
Powell looked past him at Bella.
“Bella, please … The man is trying to crucify me. Tell him it was your
tape.”
“It wasn’t my tape.”
“Oh my god, I see what’s happening. Please, he can’t have any proof
either of us is involved. It’s a bluff. Don’t say anything. I promise you,
we’ll be all right.”
Bella stood and left the room. When Powell called after her his voice
broke, but she didn’t stop or even look over her shoulder. The door closed
behind her and I felt vaguely frightened. Everything now seemed
irrevocable, a string of events charging like a locomotive toward some
unknown, but unalterable destination. And I had set it in motion.
Ryan chuckled.
“It don’t look good for you, pops. But you got one last chance. Roll
your sleeve up. You got any usable veins left?”
 “What are you going to do?”
Ryan took a syringe out of his jacket pocket, twisted the cap off.
“I want some blood to DNA against what we found in the body.”
“You found something in the body?”
“Are you going to cooperate or not?”
“Of course I will. The test will prove I’m innocent.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He sucked blood out of Powell’s right arm, then capped the syringe and
put it back in his pocket. Powell rolled down his sleeve and made a move to
stand, but before he could get upright Ryan produced a pair of handcuffs
and locked his arms behind his back.
“Until I get the word on your blood, Daddy-o, I want you where I can
find you.”
Ryan and I half walked, half dragged him down to a storage room in the
basement. The door didn’t look particularly strong so Ryan took the cuffs
off, looped them behind an exposed pipe, and put them back on again.
Powell seemed to have retreated. When we left he didn’t look up from
where he was crouched at the base of the pipe, and he didn’t say anything.
On the ground floor. I walked with Ryan to the front door.
“That was pretty brutal.”
“If a thing’s worth doing …”
“Handcuffing him and locking him up isn’t going to look good when
you get him to court.”
“You let me worry about that side of things.”
“Are we just going to leave him down there?”
“What do you want to do, suck him off?”
“He’s a junkie.”
“A few days ago fucking him up was your mission in life, don’t start
acting like a pussy now the shit’s coming down. If you’re that worried, give
him a shot.”
Ryan split to give the blood sample to whatever police lab technician he
had leverage with. I went upstairs and fucked Bella, we didn’t mention her
father. When she fell asleep I sat in front of a TV and watched cop shows
until I passed out myself.
Around three in the morning I woke and went to check on Powell. The
storage room was puke free, he hadn’t reached that stage yet, but the place
smelled bad with his sweat and it looked like leg cramps weren’t far off. He
told me where his stash was. I got it from his suite and cooked him up a
shot. After the smack had taken hold he tried to talk to me, but I didn’t stick
around to listen. I didn’t want to know anything more than I already did.
Upstairs again I looked in on Bella, but Ryan had come back and was
grunting away with his head between her legs. I found a bed somewhere
else in the house and lay awake wishing I could take something. But I was
shooting in the morning and I couln’t afford to oversleep.

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 Chapter Thirty-Five
Lorn had a friend in Hawaii who sent her ice sometimes—totally cool that
morning, as my fucked-up sleep the night before had left me less than
chirpy. We smoked it in a glass pipe that looked like something out of a
chemistry set. An amphetamine variant that lasts and lasts. Enhanced brain
speed, pumped up physical performance, improved concentration. An
excellent drug that hadn’t spread well because it was too cheap for dealers
to make anything like they would on crack. They say you start to hear
voices if you do too much, but then they’ll say anything.
James moaned that we were rushing when we got in front of the camera
so we had to balance things out a little with a lude or two. By lunchtime we
were faking normality pretty well—on an open-air bus that took tourists
around various Hollywood death spots. We asked the driver questions and
generally fucked around in the style demanded of presenters on that type of
show.
At the end of the day Lorn wanted me to go with her to some Korean
bathhouse she’d discovered. The thought of floating around naked and
pretending nothing existed but her body and the heat and the water was
enticing, but I couldn’t do it. Things at Malibu were approaching critical
mass and I couldn’t risk being away too long. Also, I felt kind of
responsible for Powell and I knew if I didn’t give him his shot no one else
would.
Driving back I thought about Rex. Right then, sitting stoned in a dark
room with the TV on twenty-four hours a day seemed like a reasonable
response to the nineties when you compared it with the anxiety generated
by most other ways of living. Of course, you’d have to be careful which
shows you picked to watch. Documentaries, nature programs, shows about
poor people—they’d be okay, you wouldn’t be confronted by any great
difference between your lifestyle and theirs. But you’d have to stop yourself
thinking about what great lives the producers had, and the directors,
cameramen, presenters … And you’d have to be majorly careful not to flip
onto anything from Spelling or Starr.
 I called him on my mobile but it sounded like he’d been disconnected.
Not much of a surprise, considering.
Back at Malibu I got Powell’s dose together and went straight to the
basement. He had a strip of duct tape across his mouth now, but apart from
that nobody seemed to have done much for him. Parts of his suit jacket
were dark with sweat and there was a pool of piss over by one wall, as far
away as he’d been able to squirt it from where he was cuffed. I thought
about giving him some water, but I didn’t want to take the tape off, so I just
fixed him and went upstairs.
They were waiting for me, sitting at a round walnut table in a room that
had a view of forest going vague in the twilight. It looked like they’d been
there some time.
“Jackie, we were just talking about you. You were right all along. DNA
makes Powell our man.”
“You got the results?”
“A half hour ago, he matches the spunk. Me and Beauty here been
deciding on an appropriate course of action.”
“Arrest him, of course.”
“That’s not our favorite option.”
“What are you talking about? You have to.”
Bella cut in.
“Jack, things are complicated. For all of us. I admit, having him arrested
was my first thought too, but it’s not something we can do. He’s too closely
connected to me.”
“But you didn’t have anything to do with the murder.”
“Of course I didn’t. But certain of my interests would not be looked on
favorably by the police. I’m sure you understand what I mean.”
“What she means, Jackie, is she’d end up getting busted as well.
Karen’s death is linked to the kidney operations too tight for them not to
come out, and they aren’t something anybody’s going to turn a blind eye to.
Plus, you can never really figure which way an investigation’s going to go.
Even if it starts off everyone’s for Powell on the murder, things could get
twisted around. Maybe Beauty being rich pisses some cop off, maybe a
piece of evidence gets interpreted different from how I see it. Who knows?
What’s for sure is if we go with the law, all of us’ll get fucked one way or
another. Beauty’ll do time for her operations alone, and the best you can
hope for is withholding evidence—and they won’t have much trouble
upscaling that to accessory after the fact. Not to mention that with Bella
gone you could hardly expect to maintain your current lifestyle.”
“Not to mention that any investigation would turn up your
blackmailing.”
“Good, Jackie, you got a handle on things—we’re all in it together.”
Bella put her hand on mine and spoke gently.
“It sounds ghastly, but there really is only one thing we can do.”
She paused and shook back her hair as though she was trying to be very
brave. “We have to kill him.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious. There’s no other way.”
“You honestly want to kill him?”
“You’ve seen what he does to dogs. I’m sure Ryan can describe what he
did to Karen if you want. He’s unstable. What do you think he’s going to do
if we don’t deal with him? He won’t have a choice, he’ll have to kill us all.”
“I thought you didn’t want to go to jail.”
“I’m sure Ryan has the necessary expertise to avoid anything like that.”
“He’s going to do it?”
Ryan put his elbows on the table and leaned toward me. “Sure I am,
Jackie. For another million bucks, who wouldn’t? Besides, I got my own
reasons.”
“You’re getting another million dollars?”
“Beauty’s promised it for services shortly to be rendered, and I don’t
have a problem trusting her. But what we really need to discuss, Jackie boy,
is your part in the action. See, I’m gonna need a little help.”
“No fucking way.”
Ryan put a surprised expression on his face. “Why, Jackie, don’t be
churlish.”
“You don’t need me. You could do it better by yourself.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I do need you. See, I don’t want you
walking away from this thinking you’re all uninvolved, and maybe a few
years down the line getting an uncontrollable urge to talk. Nope, I’ll feel a
whole lot more comfortable with you nice and tied in. And it ain’t only that.
You’re sucking up rewards left, right, and center—a house here, a car there,
your own little TV show—and I’m fucked if I’m gonna carry the load for
your life as well as my own. It’s time to make a contribution, boy.”
“No.”
“You don’t have to pull the trigger, just be there to help, hold him down
if he gets feisty, that kinda thing. It ain’t exactly difficult.”
“Ted, perhaps you’d give us a minute alone.”
When I heard Bella use his first name I knew I was fucked. Ryan left
the room and she moved closer to me.
“You have to think this through, Jack. We can’t have Powell running
around now that we’ve gone this far. Sooner or later he’d destroy me.
Doesn’t that worry you?”
“Of course it does.”
“And you do agree he has to be punished for what he did to Karen?”
“Well, yeah, but murder … Look, you cut kidneys out and wank with
them, and Ryan thinks killing is one of the perks of his job. But I’m just a
guy. I’ve never done this kind of thing. You can’t ask me to waste someone,
for Christsake.”
“But I am, Jack. Like Ryan said, you need to make a contribution. Just
go along with him. He only wants you to watch.”
“But being there will be just as bad if we’re caught.”
“Jack, I’m asking for some evidence of your love. I’ve given you a lot,
but that can’t continue if it doesn’t work both ways.”
“What about Ryan? He’ll never go away after this.”
“He’ll go away and things will be better for us than they’ve ever been.”
“I don’t think he will. I think he’ll stay forever, fucking you and taking
your money.”
“He’ll go away.”
The second time she said it I started to believe her. There was
something in her voice that would have been frightening if it had been
directed at me.
So … Bail on watching someone get whacked and say goodbye to my
piece of paradise, or tough it out and get even more—that was the message.
Not really a choice. So I said yes. I guess I’d been moving toward
something like it ever since Karen’s death—from selling my ass, to
wanking over pictures of dead people, to doing it with a dead chick in the
morgue. Taking a ride with Ryan wasn’t really such a leap. Not when you
considered what was at stake.
Ryan came back into the room and the rest of the evening went into
fast-forward. I felt ill and cold.
We set off in the Jaguar around eleven. Ryan and I wore plastic spray
jackets and over-trousers he’d bought earlier in the sporting section of a
department store. We had the hoods over our heads. Powell sat
uncomfortably in the passenger seat, hands cuffed behind his back, a few
extra strips of tape on his mouth. Ryan drove, I was in the back. The black
glass shielded us from the eyes of the world, which was just as well because
two guys dressed for a monsoon on a mild Californian night and another
one with his mouth taped shut might have attracted attention.
Ryan wanted it to look like a queer trick gone wrong, and he wanted a
place where cooperation with the authorities wouldn’t be overly
forthcoming. So we made for the drag. I could see the side of Powell’s
head, he looked drained of self-will and immensely tired. Twenty-four
hours chained to a pipe and much less heroin than he’d ordinarily take
couldn’t have done him much good, but it was more than that. He knew
what was going to happen and he knew there wasn’t anything he could do
about it. I turned my head away and counted palm trees.
We cruised. Past the whores and on into faggot territory. We did it a
couple of times so that if anyone remembered the car it’d look like a john
out for trade. I knew each pass along the street was bringing us closer to
going active and I had an almost uncontrollable urge to piss. I pressed my
thighs together and held my knees. My hands sweated inside the
dishwashing gloves Ryan and I had accessorized our plastic ensembles
with. I’d expected surgical latex, but that ripped too easily. Apparently. The
knowledge Ryan had was chilling, but his obvious experience gave me a
bizarre kind of reassurance. I guessed if anyone could get away with
murder, he could.
We turned off the drag about the middle of where the boys hung out and
worked our way into the warren of vagrant hostels and warehouses that
made up the southern flank of the area. Most of the streetlights didn’t work
and there wasn’t anyone walking around. Ryan guided the car off the road,
into the loading bay of some abandoned Mexican food company. Plenty of
shadow, no windows overlooking.
 Ignition off, park-brake set. Time to deal. Time to deal and hope to fuck
I could maintain afterwards.
Ryan twisted in his seat like he was about to engage Powell in
conversation, but he wasn’t wearing his conversation face. In fact, the fat
white circle in the center of his tightly drawn hood looked like something
made from putty.
“Guess you can figure the result of your blood test.”
Powell maked a high-pitched noise through his nose.
“What’s that, pops? You didn’t do it? It wasn’t you who cut open my
little girl and jerked into the hole? Gee, could I have made a mistake?”
Ryan screwed up his face like he was thinking, then shook his head.
“Nope. No mistake, you fuck. You cut her guts out and you got off
while you did it. Now it’s my turn to get unglued.”
Ryan took a knife out of the door pocket, something that looked like it
was designed to skin animals—a short wide blade, sharp on both sides.
Powell started shaking his head around and making more noise, it sounded
very loud in the car. My fear and his combined into a hideous tension that
gave me a hard-on. It surprised me a little, but I put it down to stress.
Ryan pushed the sides of Powell’s jacket apart, unbuttoned his shirt, and
unzipped the top of his trousers, exposing him from his throat to the start of
his pubic hair. White skin like Bella’s, but not as tight.
“The man who sold me this knife said it was sharp enough to do an
operation with. Let’s if he was telling the truth.”
Powell tossed in his seat. He wasn’t very strong because he was on the
edge of withdrawal again, but it made things awkward for Ryan. This was
where I came in. I reached over and wrapped my arms around his upper
chest and held him still.
When the point of the knife got close to his sternum I heard him fart,
not just air, but a long wet stuttering noise like he was letting go of
everything in his colon. The air in the Jag funked up pretty bad, but we kept
the windows closed all the same.
“Oh, deary me. Eat something that didn’t agree? Maybe I can find it for
you.”
Ryan stroked the edge of his knife down in a single straight line—not
deep, only about a quarter inch. There were a few small folds of skin
around Powell’s navel and he had to go back over them. For a couple of
seconds the wound was just this weird track with white edges and a fine red
center, more like a split than a cut. Then blood started running out of it.
Powell really shifted then and I had to hang on tight. To get the best
position I leaned forward with my chest against the back of the seat. This
put my head next to his, my chin almost on his shoulder. The squealing he
made hurt my ear. I could see blood collecting between his legs. I felt bad
about what we were doing and all I wanted was for it to be over. But my
hard-on didn’t go away.
Ryan made another cut, following the same line, deeper now, beyond
skin and fat into the first layers of abdominal muscle. Powell arced himself
out of the seat and Ryan shouted at me to keep him down. I did what I could
but it was difficult, blood kept splashing up and getting in my eyes and I
had to let go with one hand to wipe it off. Ryan waited for Powell to slump
back, then started cutting again. He paid a great deal of attention to what he
was doing.
When the belly finally opened, it happened in a kind of visceral
explosion. The edges pulled apart like they were spring-loaded and guts and
shit flew everywhere. Powell screamed and jerked in my arms and I came
so hard it felt like someone had turned a hose on in my pants. If I had had
the time I might have felt ashamed, but Ryan was busy pulling organs out of
Powell and I had to work at keeping him upright.
“Greasy old fuck.” Ryan flicked a gob of something off his glove and
sat back breathing heavy and looking exhausted. “Should have made it last
longer. Whaddya think, I went too fast? Shit, I wish Karen could see this.”
Powell felt way too heavy to hold onto now so I let go of him. His head
fell forward, but otherwise he didn’t move.
“You know, Jackie, you see those cops on TV sniveling about how bad
they feel when they shoot someone—just shows what bullshit it is. I felt
good every time I ever did it. Especially now. How about you? You feel
good? Won’t be something you forget in a hurry, I bet.”
I looked around the interior of the car. There was an awful lot of blood.
It ran down the insides of the windows and dripped off the dash, the nice
English carpet was swimming in it. No, it wasn’t something I was likely to
forget.
“You look pale, Jackie.”
“I feel pale.”
 “Just keep telling yourself the fucker killed your wife, you’ll be fine.
Take the tape off him and let’s get the fuck outta here.”
Ryan climbed out of the car and started stripping off his plastic wear. I
pulled Powell’s head back and peeled away his gag. He made a raspy
breathing noise like it was a big relief and opened his eyes. I jumped and
was about to yell for Ryan but he whispered something. His voice sounded
like it was coming from the bottom of a drain.
“In the freezer …”
Then he vomited a bucketful of blood into his own open guts and died
properly.
Out of the car, between its glossy black finish and the greasy concrete
where trucks backed up to get loaded. I removed my wet-weather gear and
wiped my face with handfuls of tissue. Ryan bundled all the blood-covered
stuff into a suitcase and told me he’d dump it someplace away from the
scene.
We walked casually back to the drag, then up to Hollywood Boulevard,
and took separate cabs to the junction of Sunset and PCH where Ryan had
his Plymouth parked.
On the drive to Malibu there wasn’t much other traffic and I stared at
the line in the middle of the road and thought about how Karen, who started
all of it off, didn’t have a thing to do with it anymore. The reality of the
bloodletting had shocked me into some kind of motivational clarity and I
could see now that revenge for her death had never really been an issue. She
was just a name for the game. For a while I wondered how a person I lived
with for two years could have become so ultimately insignificant. Then I
remembered something from back in the Jaguar.
“How come you said ‘my little girl’?”
“Huh?”
“Before you started cutting Powell, you called Karen your little girl.”
“I said this, I said that. What the fuck?”
“You never called her anything like that before.”
“Like I said, what the fuck?”
“Some things don’t add up.”
“Ain’t that just like life?”
“I can’t figure you killing someone, taking that kind of a risk, over just
a hooker you used to know. It isn’t you. And the way you did it … Powell
could have been made to lay out a good few bucks, but as soon as you got
proof, you whacked him. Seems like you moved so fast you didn’t even
think about money. It would have been more your style to suck him for
what he was worth first.”
“Maybe I was thinking about Bella. Maybe I’m more human than you
think.”
“Jesus, give me a break. You might like fucking her, but you wouldn’t
kill someone just to help her out.”
“How about the million bucks?”
“You could have got that easily enough blackmailing her again about
her operations. Shit, even Powell could probably have raised it to stop
himself getting killed.”
Ryan didn’t say anything, just looked through the windshield and made
a show of concentrating on the road.
“And you basically tortured him to death. Why not just shoot him in the
head? It would have been a whole lot safer than sitting there all that time.
You got too much out of it for a straight execution. It meant something
more.”
“All right, Jack! Enough.”
“I helped you do it, I’ve got a right to know.”
Ryan glanced angrily at me, then his face changed and he sighed.
“No one has rights, Jackie. Not when it comes down to it. Food, shelter,
love, life … You ain’t got a right to any of it. All you can do is grab as
much as you can and hope you get hold of a decent chunk before you check
out. But I guess it’s over now, and you and me shared a few things, so I’ll
tell you. One thing though, Beauty don’t get to hear about it. Ever.”
“Absolutely.”
Ryan shifted his ass onto one cheek and took out a wallet. He flipped it
open and thumbed out a beat-up photograph—a girl in her early teens,
coltish and pretty, blond hair cut short even then, shorts and a tank top,
smooth-limbed against the fence of a tract house, the kind they have in the
shittier parts of the valley. Unmistakably Karen.
“I don’t understand.”
“She was my kid.”
Ryan’s voice was flat, like he was frightened that if he allowed emotion
to creep in it would overwhelm him.
 “I had her with a whore I was fucking when I joined the force. We split
up before she was born, but I stayed in touch. With Karen, not with the
bitch. I didn’t have much else and I figured it was the right thing to do. It
worked for a while, we had some good times together, but she got wild
when she started growing tits and told me to stop coming around. I tried to
keep it going, but I guess she was pissed off with me not being there and all.
When she was fifteen she ran away from home. I didn’t see her for five
years after that. Then I was working Monica one night and I came across
her selling her ass. I didn’t hassle her, shit, all I wanted was some contact—
you have a kid, that kinda feeling never goes away. But she didn’t feel the
same. She told me if I wanted to spend time with her I’d have to buy her.
She only said it to get back at me, I know, but it pissed me off so much I did
it—paid to fuck my own kid. It bothered me at first, but she was a great
fuck and what was I gonna do? You hit fifty without family, the world’s a
cold place. We did it regular for a long time, but about four months before
she was killed she got sick of it and told me to fuck off. The next time I saw
her she was in the morgue.”
Ryan put his photo away and cleared his throat.
“That’s why I killed Powell. And that’s why I did it the way I did. After
the DNA there was no reason to wait. Million-dollar joke on Beauty, huh? I
woulda done it for free.”
“You were never going to arrest anyone, were you? Whether it was me
or Bella or whoever.”
“Karen deserved more than the system. Who was gonna give a fuck
about her? Shit, a dead whore comes in, they have to hold a lottery to see
who gets the file ’cause no one wants it. Everyone’s too busy trying to solve
cases that can do them some good. And even if some cop has his ass in gear
enough to get it to court, it could be the killer only gets ten years, out in
less. If it’s some crackhead or junkie they plead diminished responsibility. If
it’s someone with money they plea bargain. I wasn’t going to let that
happen. I wanted to make sure the punishment fit the crime.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had a momentary urge to laugh at
the ridiculousness of Karen being Ryan’s daughter, but I didn’t, because at
the same time it seemed so disgustingly sad.
Ryan took a heart pill and I lit a cigarette. Our headlights cut a hole in
the night. On our left the ocean gathered itself like a beast waiting to spring.
I suggested tossing the suitcase into it. Ryan said to stop worrying, he’d
deal with it later.
At Malibu we spent the rest of the night in an extended fuck session—I
guess Bella thought we deserved some kind of reward. I would rather have
swallowed something and slept for a long time, but I felt shaky after the
murder and got paranoid that maybe they’d start plotting against me if I left
them alone together. When the humping eventually stopped I curled up and
thought about what Powell had whispered back in the car of blood. In the
freezer. What did it mean? Could have been he was just so far gone with
pain and fear it didn’t mean anything. On the other hand, if a dying man
tells you something it’s pretty hard not to figure it might be important, one
way or another.
Ryan moved out the following day, took his cash and his Bentley, and had
me follow him in the Plymouth to a bungalow he’d rented in Westwood. It
was a nice house in a nice area, not flashy, but easily middle-class—the
kind of place where nobody was going to bother asking where your money
came from as long as you looked okay. I took a cab back to Malibu and
collected my clothes and the Mustang. Ryan had instructed me to disappear
before the cops came calling to tell Bella they’d found her father—a lover
hanging around the place would not look good, he said.
Bella stood with her hand on the car door as I was about to leave.
“You were very brave, Jack.”
“Yeah.”
“You can’t know what it means to me to be free of him.”
“There’s still Ryan. He’ll be back as soon as this blows over.”
“Our future doesn’t include him.”
“I hope not.”
We kissed, then I started the car. Before I pulled away, Bella stroked the
side of my face.
“Being apart will be awful. I’ll think of you every minute.”
“Me too.”

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 Chapter Thirty-Six
Eight weeks is what Ryan figured to be a safe time. It only took the police
four to determine that Powell had been murdered by assailants unknown,
probably while trying to buy sex, and to dump the case with a million other
unsolveds, but Ryan wasn’t taking any chances.
The time dragged by in an agony of potential catastrophe. First I packed
shit that I was going to get busted, then I packed shit that being away from
Bella for so long would spell the end of our relationship and its associated
benefits. While I was working, things weren’t too bad, but downtime
quickly became unbearable, and in an effort to find some alleviation of my
anxiety I began to invite Lorn to Willow Glen. The only thing that made it
less stupid now than the time she suggested it herself was that I figured
Bella wouldn’t risk visiting me during the separation period.
Lorn ended up staying about four nights out of seven and seemed to
enjoy the continuity of our time together. I think she wanted to upscale
whatever it was we had between us, to move to a place where we’d feel it
necessary to start revealing ourselves to each other. I, of course, had no
intention of playing that game. Sometimes, though, when I was holding her
before sleep, I caught myself wishing that she could have been the one
providing houses and cars and TV time. Then I’d have had everything.
On the nights I was alone, and sometimes in the day too when I wasn’t
working, I drove aimlessly through L.A.—I figured if I kept moving my
fears wouldn’t be able to take hold of me. But it didn’t work, and on one
occasion things got so bad I had to stop at a pay phone and call Bella for
reassurance. It helped because she told me she loved me and how good
things were going to be when we got back together. She even said she’d
started watching 28 FPS she missed me so much. I watched it too, but it
was depressing. I timed how long my face appeared on the screen each half-
hour show. Usually it wasn’t longer than four minutes.
Lorn and I only went out together once during this time—to a club Dan
Ackroyd owned. While we were there I had her take Polaroid photos of me
standing at the bar with movie people in the background.
 At home that night I shut myself in the toilet and stared at the pictures,
looking for whatever it was that made this golden breed so much better than
me. But it was a secret I couldn’t learn. So I shuffled the prints up with the
ones Ryan had given me and flicked through them—me a few feet away
from Woody Harrelson, the dead chick with the crowbar up her ass, my face
emerging from shadow behind Oliver Stone and some director from New
Zealand in close conversation, an angle on the dead couple fucking, bags
over their heads. Flash cards that reflected something about me. But what?
Probably everything there was to know, but I couldn’t figure it out.
Toward the end of the eight weeks, with Bella reentry looming, I
stopped asking Lorn over. Unfortunately that didn’t end her visits. She
started turning up uninvited, and to drive the message home I had to make it
obvious my enthusiasm for our increased contact was not what it had been.
I didn’t want to sever things completely, but neither did I want the level of
danger her presence in my house represented vis-à-vis Bella. It was a fine
line to tread and I guess I pretty much failed at it. The last time she was
around she left well before dawn, not in floods of tears or anything, but I
could tell by the expression on her face that things hadn’t panned out the
way she’d hoped. It made me feel bad for a while, but what could I do?
Even if I’d loved her it couldn’t have been any different.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter Thirty-Seven
Back at Malibu. It was a relief to be close to Bella and her money again. We
fucked a lot and generally did the reunited thing. Ryan had terminated his
live-in stint, but a couple of times a week he swooped in from Westwood
like a corpulent specter to exercise his humping rights and be taken out to
places where the wealthy gathered—an additional payment for doing
Powell that hadn’t really been made clear to me before. He’d quit the police
force and had some half-ass idea that mixing with the right people might
lead to a technical adviser’s spot on a cop show.
He gave me another set of photos; he said they were the last I’d get—
without cop-access things of that nature weren’t quite as easy to come by.
These were lifted from the evidence folder of a recent bust—a couple of
paramedics making extra bucks catering to a more extreme taste. When
they got a dead body in the back of their truck they’d hang up a sheet so
you couldn’t tell where it was and bring out the camera. I scored three
glossies—a blond girl in her twenties with her legs held open, the electrical
flex with which she’d hanged herself still embedded in the flesh of her
neck; the same girl flipped over with a paramedic’s fist inside her pussy; a
head-and-tits shot of a dark-haired woman, unmarked but unmistakably
dead, her eyes open and her lips slightly parted.
Work with Lorn on 28 FPS carried on much the same as before. She
was a little cold sometimes, but other than that we maintained a serviceable
relationship, we even still snatched a fuck now and then. The only
professional gripe I had was the continued nonexpansion of my screen time.
I figured getting Bella to do something about it would be easier while the
flush of our reunion was still running hot. So one night, shortly after my
return to Malibu, I acted pissed off long enough for her to notice.
“Aren’t you happy, Jack?”
“Oh, sure …”
“But?”
“Ryan still being around frightens me.”
“It won’t be forever.”
 “You sound pretty certain.”
“Would you expect me to be anything else? But we’ve talked about him
before, what is it?”
“Just hassles on the show.”
“You don’t enjoy it anymore?”
“Of course I enjoy it. It’s a dream come true. But I’m not getting
anywhere. I hardly have any more screen time now than when I started.”
Bella was silent for a while, like she was considering granting me an
enormous favor.
“Perhaps I could ask Howard to have a word with Burns. It might be a
little tricky, they’d have to take time away from the girl and it was
originally her show. But I don’t see why a few extra minutes should be a
problem. I’ll have to ask you for something in return, though.”
“Hey, anything.”
“As wonderful as it is to have him gone, Powell’s absence creates a
difficulty.”
“I thought everything with the police was cool.”
“I’m talking about my operations.”
“You’re going to carry on with that?”
“Of course.”
“Isn’t it a bit dangerous? They’ve only just finished investigating.”
“No more than it ever was. But that’s beside the point, it isn’t something
I can give up.”
“Don’t tell me, you want me to get the donors.”
“Yes.”
“Jesus, I just helped kill your father. I thought that was going to be the
end of it. Ask Ryan to do it.”
“Don’t be absurd. All you have to do is drive around, find the right sort
of person, and offer them money. They jump at the chance, believe me.”
“Unless I pick the wrong one and get busted. Can’t you get therapy
instead?”
“The risk is minimal. And I don’t think it’s much to ask from someone
who loves you.”
“I do love you.”
“Good. I need one soon, Jack. It’s been two months.”
Next day, after I finished some studio work on the lot, Burns called me into
the production office and told me they were going to increase my
participation in the show. I was to take over the new-release review slot, a
high-profile segment which had been exclusively Lorn’s until then. The air
of resignation with which he relayed the news didn’t spoil the elation I felt
at the prospect of pumping up my public visibility, and for a while, as I
walked past the soundstages to the parking area, I kidded myself that I was
no longer a faker in this place of genuine movie stars. But the buzz didn’t
last long. By the time I’d pulled off the Hollywood Freeway onto Highland,
the consequences of my promotion had thudded home. Lorn was going to
be well and truly pissed off at the theft of her screen time, especially
following so close on the downscaling of our affair. And worse than that, I
was now so indebted to Bella it made it impossible for me to drag my feet
on the issue of grabbing kidney people for her.

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 Chapter Thirty-Eight
Night. Bella was in her basement clinic at Apricot Lane. Waiting. I’d agreed
to find a victim, but at least for this first one I had a softer option than
trawling the drag.
Over to Benedict Canyon with the top up on the Mustang. I turned the
radio up loud and tried not to think about what I was doing. It worked for a
while but when I parked outside Rex’s place there wasn’t much chance of
escaping the kind of person I’d become. Or maybe always had been. But,
shit, if it was easy to get to the top everybody would be there.
It had been a long time since my last visit and his place looked deserted.
The small patch of grass between the house and the sidewalk needed cutting
and was littered with newspapers and empty cans. Tendrils of jacaranda
hung down over the top of the front door. I’d tried to call him earlier, but his
phone was still down and I wasn’t sure if he even lived there anymore.
But he did. And things had gotten worse since my last visit. Only the
TV for light, carpet sticky underfoot, wallpaper hanging in coiled sheets
where it had been partly ripped from the walls, a pile of turds in one corner,
the stink of shit and vomit. And in the middle of it all, Rex, sprawled on the
floor, back propped against the remains of the couch, looking like
something out of Belsen. He’d lost a lot of weight and sometime in the last
week or two he’d shaved his head. Under the stubble his scalp looked gray
and too tight. The needle sites at the crook of each arm were over-used and
seeping clear pus.
“Come to save me?”
His voice was nasal and when he leered up at me his teeth didn’t look
good.
“In a way. Do you want to earn some money?”
“How much?”
“Thirty thousand.”
He didn’t scoff. From the way we’d left things last time he must have
known I wouldn’t come around for an idle bullshitting session. I watched
him translate that amount of money into smack. Enough to last him to the
end of his life. More than enough from the look of him.
“Wasting that cop friend of yours might be a little beyond me right now.
Anything else, fire away.”
I laid out the kidney thing and it was cool by him. I made a call to Bella,
then we got in the car.
On the way to Apricot Lane he stared out the window like L.A. was a
new city to him, some vast tract of urban boredom he simply couldn’t
recognize anymore. I took Benedict Canyon Drive up to Mulholland to give
him a better view. I told myself that it might rekindle some feeling of
friendship on his part—we’d driven the same stretch the night he’d taken
me to my first paid sex gig. But maybe all I was doing was trying to
connect again with a time when I wasn’t responsible for murder, when I
didn’t get hard over pictures of dead people, and when I didn’t have to
serve up a onetime friend as fodder for a mad millionairess so I could stay
on TV.
He hardly spoke during the drive. Once, though, he turned away from
the window and looked at me so tenderly I thought I’d start crying.
“I’m sorry.”
But when I smiled at his words, about to tell him everything was okay,
he threw up the screens again and went back to the meaningless lights.
Bella met us at the bottom of the steps down from the garage, already in
surgical green. Her eyes were dark and bright. She didn’t try to make
conversation with Rex or put him at ease. He was there for the money, she
was there to get off. That’s all there was to it.
She had him strip and take a shower. His scrawny ass, as he walked into
the bathroom that adjoined the pre-op area, made her frown.
“Is he a close friend?”
“Why?”
“Will you miss him?”
“You’re only taking his kidney out.”
“He’s in very poor condition. Without Powell I’m going to have to use
intravenous anesthetic. I’ll try to minimize the time he’s under, but there is a
risk of respiratory failure with that type of drug for someone so debilitated.
And if he does make it through the operation his remaining kidney may not
be strong enough to cope.”
“He might die?”
“It’s possible he’ll suffer renal failure some days after the operation.
The combination of the anesthetic and the heroin in his system may also
prove dangerous.”
“But he could be okay?”
“I can’t promise anything one way or the other.”
“Jesus, what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t care what you do as long as I have a donor. If you want to go
out again and find me someone else, fine. If you want to warn him of the
dangers and he chooses to pull out, well, that’s up to you …”
She left the sentence hanging and it was obvious that delaying the
night’s proceedings was not going to win me any points. Even so, I could
have gone and found someone else—there wouldn’t have been any shortage
of trash down on the drag just waiting to jump at thirty thousand dollars.
But it was a risk and a hassle and besides, Rex would have been pissed off
if I took away his chance at the money. What swung it in the end, though,
was that I realized the outcome of the operation didn’t matter. He was going
to die soon anyhow and I figured his death might as well do someone some
good as not.
I helped her get him ready—shaved off a patch of fine hair on his left
side and painted on some sticky brown antiseptic liquid. His eyes met mine
as Bella fitted a lance into the back of his hand and fed in the pre-op. I
didn’t see much there, just abandonment to circumstance, a flicker of
uncertainty, and maybe a little relief. I could have said something
reassuring, but that kind of thing is meaningless when the person you’re
saying it to is chasing death. So I kept my mouth closed and watched him
black out.
Bella wanted me to gown up and stay with her while she worked. But
enticing Rex into a situation where he might sustain terminal physical
damage was one thing, being there to see it happen was another altogether.
So after I’d helped her wheel him through the swing doors into the green
brilliance of the operating room and position him under the light cluster I
went upstairs and watched TV. I fell asleep during some documentary about
whales and didn’t wake up until Bella shook me.
 She had a lazy smile on her face and her eyes had gone soft, she looked
like a sated vampire.
“How’s Rex?”
“It went well. He’s stable, but I don’t know how long that will last.”
“I want to see him.”
He looked bad, his skin was gray and didn’t have much life behind it. He
was still groggy from the anesthetic but awake enough to ask when he’d get
his money. He wanted to go home straight away but Bella refused. We left
him with a drip in his arm and a machine on a stand that gave him a dose of
morphine every five minutes if he pressed a button. Bella locked the door
behind us.
That night we slept in one of the bedrooms upstairs from the basement
clinic. Bella didn’t make a move on me once, which suited me fine because
right then I didn’t feel like being close to her at all.

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 Chapter Thirty-Nine
Early evening sun, palms against the sky, a gritty wind that felt soft all the
same. L.A. As good as the life you lead in it. Blacks killing each other over
in Watts, movie stars fucking each other in B.H. Being one place or the
other is just a matter of luck. But if luck happens to you here, it happens big
—beach bum to screen hero, cocksucker to supermodel, crack dealer to rap
star … one extreme to another. And I was in there somewhere, riding the
tides of the city, playing a small part in what the place was famous for—
journeys out of obscurity.
Bella had been strange toward me the last few days. When I spoke to
her she answered in a tone of poorly disguised anger. She wouldn’t allow
me into her bedroom and she wouldn’t fuck me. Such an abrupt reversal of
attitude was frightening. All I could think was that she regretted allowing
me to see the part of her that found it necessary to squander other people’s
kidneys. Maybe she was angry at making herself vulnerable.
Despite this fresh source of insecurity, though, I was feeling pretty
good. I’d spent the afternoon with my Century City agent being styled and
made up, photographed and videoed. There was a men’s grooming gig
doing the rounds and they’d wanted test material to sell me for it. If it
happened it would be unbelievable—nationwide TV, billboard and press
coverage, rollovers into next year and beyond. The face of a glossy product,
a kind of male equivalent to Isabella Rossellini or Elizabeth Hurley.
I hadn’t bothered to wash off the makeup and when I stopped at lights I
looked slyly at the other cars to see if the people in them were staring at me.
I caught a few faces turned my way and I figured they must have been
scrolling through lists of famous names, trying to see where I fit in.
Santa Monica Boulevard straight through Beverly Hills, Doheny up to
Sunset then Laurel Canyon Drive when it came up on my left. I mobiled
Bella, not to tell her what I’d done with the day—I figured it was smarter to
keep quiet about any potential future success that didn’t involve her—but to
check on Rex. The news wasn’t great. After a week and a half he’d had his
fill of recuperation and had insisted on going home that afternoon. Bella,
freed of having to monitor him, was already back at Malibu. Ryan had just
arrived and she wanted me there to share the burden. I didn’t want to fuck
up my mood any sooner than I had to, so I told her yeah but it would be a
while because I had to swing by Willow Glen and pick up some clothes. Of
course I had more than I needed at Malibu, but my agent had rush-printed a
few stills for me and I wanted to spend some time alone with them.
At my place the machine had messages from Lorn. Different schedules
had kept us from connecting. She’d heard about the expansion of my screen
time and I could tell she wasn’t at all happy. I couldn’t blame her, losing
exposure is the same as losing part of your worth as a human being. I knew
I should call her, but I didn’t. Maybe if I had had some coke I could have
mustered the energy, but I’d decided not to do so many drugs, it was
important I keep my skin clear.
Instead I looked at the prints I’d brought home. I put them next to shots
of various male stars to see how I compared. I wasn’t discouraged. Then I
got my collection of sexy dead people out, mixed all the pics up together,
and spread them out on the polished wooden floor. I ran the tape of the
woman getting slaughtered in the jewelry store. I tried to take in everything
at once—Hollywood faces, myself, dead bodies getting fucked, the
expensive house around me … I wanked and spurted over the TV screen.
Then I had a shower and when I came out the stuff on the floor seemed
dangerous—incriminating evidence screaming out to be discovered. Bad
enough if I was a nobody, but if I got the grooming contract the pictures
could spell disaster. It would have been safer to burn the lot, but I couldn’t
make myself do it. I put everything away in a drawer for another time.
Ryan pumped two loads of seed, one over Bella’s tits and face, the other,
half an hour later, between the spread cheeks of her ass. I guess he’d been
saving it up because she was drenched. It came out of him like a fountain
and, watching from a chair in the corner of the room, I was surprised his
heart could take it.
Later the three of us did dinner in Monica and a postscreening party in
the hills. Bella ignored me the entire time. We stood in a corner of a room
that looked like a temple and Ryan made his usual obscene conversation
until Bella had had enough and wandered off to take a piss.
“How are the nightmares, Jackie?”
 “What nightmares?”
“You don’t see that old bastard kicking about on the front seat when you
close your eyes?”
“I don’t dream.”
He grunted and glanced about the room, then pulled me around with
him so our backs were toward the way Bella went. When he spoke again his
voice was low.
“I got something here that’ll fuck your sleep for sure. You ever do those
things when you were a kid, where you have to find what’s wrong with a
drawing?”
“What’s your point?”
“The cunt’s lying.”
He took a video cassette out of his jacket like we were in some kind of a
spy movie and handed it to me. It was one of the small ones you use in a
camcorder.
“Copy of the tape we got at Powell’s. I figured out why it bugged me.
Take it home, see if you can pick it.”
“Don’t play games, Ryan, just tell me.”
“Where’s the fun in that? I’ll give you till the day after tomorrow. Come
around to my place then, we’ll have a little chat.”
I put the tape in my pocket and looked over my shoulder to see where
Bella had gone. She was six feet away. She made it look like she’d only just
come back from the toilet, but I got the feeling she’d been close enough to
hear for longer than that.
We hung out for a while, then Ryan said he wanted to take us to a fuck
club he knew from his days on vice. Even though I wasn’t really interested
it still shook me when Bella said she’d only go if it was just him and her. I
tried to say something about it, but it wasn’t open to question.
After they split I went back to Willow Glen and found Lorn sitting in
her car out front. Inside the house she tried to stay calm, but she was too
angry to maintain her self-control for very long and switched to loud almost
immediately.
“Why did you do it, Jack?”
“What did you expect, I was going to turn it down?”
“You don’t just get offered something like that. It’s one of the most
important parts of the show. You know someone.”
 “I don’t know anyone.”
“You’re lying.”
“You’ve got nearly all the rest, don’t you think you’re over-reacting?”
I tried to make it sound like I was talking sense and she was being
irrational, but it didn’t come off. We both knew how important those extra
minutes were.
“You know what kind of message something like this sends to the
industry. It’ll read like I’m being phased out.”
“Bullshit. Nobody’ll even notice.”
“Do you think I’m stupid? You’re fucked in the head if you think I’m
not going to get that slot back. You aren’t the only one with a friend at the
channel, you know.”
She slammed out into the night, leaving me wondering what the fuck
was going on—Bella wouldn’t let me touch her, and now, quite obviously,
neither would Lorn. I couldn’t help feeling somewhat rejected.
To distract myself I watched the tape Ryan had given me. Same as
before—Karen lying, back to camera, in front of a mirror, doing herself
with a dildo. What’s wrong with this picture? I ran through it again and
again, it didn’t say anything to me. The bracelet glinted on her wrist, but
Ryan and I had both seen that the first time. What else could there be?
Outside the sky paled. My eyes got tired and I gave up. Ryan would
have to explain it to me when I saw him.
The cunt’s lying …

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 Chapter Forty
Rex’s place. With his phone out I couldn’t ring to check on his recovery so I
figured I’d swing by and do it in person. There was no answer when I
knocked on his door. It wasn’t locked, or even properly closed, so I
wandered in and found him curled up on the floor of the lounge. Dead and
naked. I’d known it was coming, but even so it was difficult to process what
I saw. Unlike the people in my photos or the girl at the morgue, I’d known
Rex. I was used to him moving, breathing, I’d listened to him talk, sat in a
car with him, shared a beer. And to see him now, so quiet, so empty of the
spark that had made him Rex was something I found impossible to
reconcile with what he used to be. He should have been transformed,
unrecognizable, for so great a change to have taken place—but his body
was still his body, his face was still his face.
My first impulse was to touch him. I ran my hand down one side of his
torso, over the outside of his thigh. He felt cold and hard. The stitches under
his ribs shone like a row of black thorns.
I looked around the room for the story of his death. The clothes he wore
to Apricot Lane were piled on the springs of the couch. The TV was on, its
light dappled the floor and walls. On top of the set there was a clear plastic
bag with what looked to be about a quarter kilo of brown smack inside.
Next to it, a paper bag full of Pepsi and pots of chocolate pudding.
Overdose, or failure of his remaining kidney? What did it matter? He’d
got what he wanted, whatever way it came. But it wasn’t as simple as that.
Back when I put him up for the gig I thought it would be. But it wasn’t.
I knew that if I hadn’t offered him up to Bella he’d probably still be
alive, and the knowledge of my part in his death wasn’t pleasant. I should
have laid out the risks for him. I shouldn’t have involved him at all. Shit, at
one point he was the closest thing I’d had to a friend—he’d shown me a
way out of the mainstream, given me that push into making money with my
cock, even set me on the path that eventually led to Bella.
For a long time I studied his face, trying to force some link with the
golden boy he used to be, wondering if I was going to cry. But I couldn’t
and I didn’t. All I got was a close-up of clogged pores and stubble that grew
in odd directions. I stood in the middle of the room wondering if there was
anything I should do. Nothing occurred to me. I didn’t want the smack, it
was too much weight to be walking around with anyhow. I headed for the
door. I was set on going through it, I really was, out into the world, away
from that stinking, destroyed room. But it didn’t happen. I was halfway
along the hall when I realized I might never get the chance again.
Back in the lounge I maneuvered him into position. His stiffness might
have been a problem in a different situation, but the way he was curled was
actually a help. When I pulled him up onto his knees and elbows his ass
was angled just right. I wedged him against one end of the couch with the
TV and got him set pretty firm. Then I went into the kitchen and found a
bottle of cooking oil.
At Malibu that night there was a guest for dinner.
Back from Rex’s, I walked into the dining room and found them sitting
cozily together over fish and salad at one end of the table—Bella and Lorn.
Lorn and her new best friend at the station. For quite a time I just stood
there with my head blank. Then things started working again with a jerk
and I realized there was a very high probability I was fucked. Added to
Bella’s less-than-friendly interaction with me recently, this pairing tonight
had to mean she’d found out about my affair with Lorn. I could only
imagine what the consequences would be.
Bella didn’t bother explaining my presence, just waved me to a chair
and carried on with whatever conversation they had going. Lorn’s first
reaction at seeing me was one of surprise. But that didn’t last long. She
might not have been a rocket scientist, but she was smart enough when it
came to the hidden currents that drove the media business, and I saw her
eyes harden as it dawned on her that I was connected—that all my
protestations the night before about just lucking into the review slot were
bullshit.
I helped myself to wine from an almost untouched bottle that stood
between them, then sat and watched Bella send lezzie looks across the table
at her new pal. Lorn played them for all they were worth, figuring, no
doubt, that sexual influence here would translate into bucks and screen time
back at Channel 52. At any other time not such a wild assumption, but right
then I had the feeling that Bella had arranged this little meeting more for
my benefit than to woo Lorn. On the surface, her motives were obvious—
retaliation in kind for my infidelity. But it could also have been something a
whole lot more dangerous than that. If she’d overheard any of Ryan’s
conversation at the postscreening party it could have been a warning not to
start poking around. Either way, it was a clear message that I was a long
way from irreplaceable.
After the meal they went up to Bella’s suite. I wasn’t invited. So I got in
my car and escaped to Willow Glen. It seemed about as good as any other
move I could have made right then.

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 Chapter Forty-One
Next morning I woke early for my meeting with Ryan. I didn’t know what
was going to happen between Bella and me—the Lorn thing might blow
over, it might not—but if Ryan had found something that could be
dangerous to her, as he’d hinted, I wanted to get hold of it as soon as
possible.
Westwood was sleepy in a haze of morning sunshine, the trees along
Ryan’s street made pleasant shadows on the road. Kids, dogs, somebody
mowing a lawn—a normal place for normal people. Strange that a guy like
Ryan should choose it as a place to live.
His bell made a hollow noise somewhere in the bungalow. I could tell
from the way it sounded that all the rooms were empty, but I kept on
anyhow. No one answered. So I wandered around the back—nice garden,
bougainvillea, jacaranda, pepper trees, an oval pool. Maybe that was what
clinched it for him—happy-family surroundings for a man who’d missed
out on them and spent his life in the city’s colon instead.
I looked through windows, but there was no movement. What
furnishings I could see were expensive but without taste. The pictures on
the walls were arty photos of chicks with big tits.
I couldn’t get in, the back door was locked and the windows had
security grills. Separate from the house, though, pushed against the edge of
the property, was a windowless garage—stucco painted white. The
rolladoors were down but a wooden access door at the side opened when I
tried it. I closed it behind me and waited for my eyes to adjust.
Smells—dry cement, gasoline, oil. Two cars faded up out of the gloom
—the gray Plymouth and the bloated silver Bentley with its top up. Ryan
had been driving the Bentley the night he laid his riddle about Karen’s
videotape.
I found the light switches and pressed them, fluoros flickered and
caught. And I found Ryan. The driver’s seat in the Bentley was reclined, but
his head was still visible through the windshield. I opened the car door and
stuck my head in. Dead. Shirt open all the way, pants rucked about his
knees, dried spunk crusting his pubic hair and the skin just above. I could
see shit in a wet smear under his balls—the car stank of it. There was more
on the seat on either side of his ass, like he’d been sliding around in it. His
face was swollen and bluish and his eyes were puffy. I felt surreal. Two
bodies in twenty-four hours was pushing things.
All the soft fat on his guts looked hard now, like it had been molded
from cold lard. His black hair was mussed and a lot more scalp showed than
when it was combed. No sicked-out Bela Lugosi anymore, nothing to be
scared of, nothing to chase you through nightmares and threaten you with a
murder rap. Just a mound of flesh with a badly colored head on top.
The first thing I felt was relief. What can I say? The guy had been
scaring the shit out of me for the last six months. Even after Powell had
taken the fall for Karen, his continued connection with Bella had been a
threat to my future. But now that was all over—no more blackmail threats,
no more having to share Bella’s cunt. His departure made things a lot
simpler.
Until I saw the vial on the dash.
Clear glass with blue printing. A top you punctured with the needle of a
syringe. Same as Bella had used in the motel with Rudy.
I pictured it happening. After the party Bella says let’s go to your place
instead of the fuck club, Ryan’s only too happy to oblige. They park in the
garage, the doors come down and one of them figures it’d be a kick to do it
in Ryan’s new car. Sitting on him, riding his cock, him all tangled up with
the steering wheel and her arms and legs, it wouldn’t have been hard to
stick a needle in his neck, then just hang on while he turned into a
jackhammer, until he started squirting shit and his heart exploded. Just like
she knew it would.
I climbed into the passenger side of the car and went through Ryan’s
pockets, hoping for a note or something to point me toward what he’d
found. No luck: change, a wallet, bits of paper, his pills, a small amount of
coke, but nothing that helped me. I sat there for a while breathing his stink,
staring at the vial on the dash, hoping closeness to his body would bring
inspiration. I put my hand on his bare thigh to see if contact helped. It
didn’t. He felt like he looked—unpleasant. And that was all there was to it,
no message, no flash of enlightenment, just a fat dead man sitting in his
own shit.
 But the time wasn’t altogether wasted. There was something about the
vial that bothered me. It didn’t click for a while, and then it did. It was
placed too obviously, too close to the edge of the dash. It couldn’t have
been there before Ryan died, his jerking would have knocked it off. And
besides, Bella must have had the syringe already charged before they got
down to it—filling up in front of him would have been a sure way to get
asked awkward questions. Why was it there at all? She certainly wasn’t
dumb enough to leave a clue like that if she wanted to make it look like a
heart attack. Only one answer—she knew I’d go there, she wanted me to
find it. It was her way of letting me know what she’d done, of warning me
against digging too deeply. Maybe she even expected me to take the
evidence away, increasing my complicity, tying myself even more tightly to
her.
Ryan’s carcass didn’t hold the remotest sexual attraction for me so I left
without touching his cock or trying to put mine inside him. I wiped my
prints, put the vial in my pocket, and closed the car door. Then I turned off
the garage lights and stepped out into a bright soft morning which I suppose
was autumn in some other part of the world. The sun dazzled my eyes and I
kept them shut as much as I could on the walk back to the Mustang. Same
way I tried as much as I could not to think about what it meant that Bella
was a killer.

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 Chapter Forty-Two
From Westwood I beelined to an art-house cinema near the university
where something trendy was previewing. It was my first review assignment
and Lorn was supposed to come along and hold my hand. But it didn’t
surprise me that she wasn’t waiting where we’d arranged. I was glad to be
alone; having to deal with the shit she’d certainly dish would have been too
much right then.
When the picture finished I hit a café and attempted to make some
notes, but I couldn’t remember anything about the film. I couldn’t even
concentrate long enough to make up something.
Instead, I smoked a lot and gazed out the window. On the other side of
the glass kids walked by, all totally cool with beatnik beards and a lot of
facial piercing. I couldn’t help wondering what it would have been like to
go to college, to get a good job and a wife and move in professional circles.
The best I could imagine was that you felt clean. You didn’t have to fuck
men in cars or puke on rich middle-aged women. You didn’t have to help
kill someone simply because it was financially more advantageous than
going to the police. I thought about the things I’d done. I saw Rex playing
doggy on the floor, Ryan’s cock in his ass. I saw myself fucking him in the
mouth. I saw him dead, like he was when I found him the day before, those
black stitches knitted into his side …
And that was it. That was what made those brain switches complete the
necessary circuit. I threw money on the table and pushed the Mustang back
to Willow Glen as fast as I could through the traffic.
In front of the TV, holding the remote, running the tape. I was certain of
what I’d find. And I did.
I moved frame by frame through Karen sliding the dildo into herself
until I got to a part where the mirror in front of her gave a clear shot of her
belly. I froze the tape. She was wearing the bracelet Bella had said she’d
given her the day she left Malibu, after recovering from the removal of her
kidney. But her abdomen was smooth, there were no stitches. She hadn’t
been operated on.
The scene wouldn’t have revealed much to anyone else, but it did to me.
It made me feel everything around me—the ground under my feet, the walls
of my house, the fabric of my life in this city—had suddenly become
unstable. Even my ability to think, to draw conclusions, to understand
events and actions seemed now to be built on fault lines at least as
treacherous as those that ran beneath L.A.
Ryan and I had figured the bracelet proved the tape had been shot after
the operation. And because Bella said she’d never seen Karen again after
she gave it to her, we’d convinced ourselves it must have been Powell who
filmed the dildo performance. That led to his DNA check, and that led, a
very short time later, to his death.
But what I realized now, and what Ryan had obviously seen too, was
that Bella had been lying. The absence of stitches meant she had to have
given Karen the bracelet sometime before the operation. So the tape could
have been shot anytime. In fact, now it seemed likely to me that Bella had
shot it herself—just as Powell had said during Ryan’s interrogation. It
would have been simple enough for her to take Karen to his apartment some
day while he was out, then add the tape to her collection and wait for him to
sneak a copy like he did with all her others. After that, the only thing
necessary to make it look like her father alone had any postoperative
contact with Karen, was to erase the original.
And the only reason she’d do that was if she’d been involved in the
murder and wanted an out if things got sticky. She could have killed Karen
by herself, or she could have done a double act with Daddy. Whatever, it
didn’t really matter. What mattered was that she’d manipulated Ryan and
me into getting rid of an old man she hated, and at the same time diverted
any threat to herself that might have arisen from Karen’s murder.
Things that had seemed without importance now became significant—
Bella’s instruction that Ryan and I search Powell’s apartment, the lack of
camera equipment there, the fact that Powell, a sixty-year-old junkie,
sexually fixated on his daughter, would probably not have had either the
energy or the desire to pursue Karen—things that should have been obvious
to us.
 What it came down to was that neither Ryan nor I had wanted her to be
involved. We’d had Powell’s thing with the dogs and his DNA, and stacked
against Bella’s money and cunt, that had been enough for us. We didn’t look
any further because we didn’t want to find anything else.

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 Chapter Forty-Three
I woke with a feeling of doom, certain that something bad was going to
happen. Just after nine it did, nice and early. Two motorcycle messengers on
my doorstep. I could hear them doing the fellow warrior thing as I walked
along the hall. When I opened the door they gave me mock salutes and bits
of paper to sign. Two guys in one-piece leather suits and alien helmets,
logos every place you could stick them. I got an envelope off one and a
small package off the other. They said dude to each other a couple of times
then climbed back on their bikes and tore off down the canyon, no doubt
completely unaware of the severe fucking they’d just delivered.
I sat on my front steps and opened my presents. First the package. From
Bella. A videotape, unused, still in its cellophane wrapper, and a small fold
of paper containing blonde pubic hair. Clever messages that said I KNOW
EVERYTHING. The hair was Lorn’s, the tape a reference to Ryan’s
discovery. And next, what else but the only thing that could follow such a
statement. A letter from Burns informing me I’d been chucked from the
show.
I couldn’t hear the birds, I couldn’t see the white houses with red roofs
that made holes in the foliage of the hills. I sat very still and tried to
assimilate. Tried to swallow the fact that this was the end of my time in
dreamland, the end of my one unheard-of chance at some sort of
justification for living. No more screen time, no more parties and premieres,
no possibility of ever becoming as good as everyone else. Desolation didn’t
cover it. And I’d brought it on myself.
For a long time I was incapable of movement, but eventually I got up
and went inside to call Bella. The phone rang for a long time but no one
answered.
I went to bed and wanked my dick raw over my photos, trying to pump
out the terror I felt at no longer being a person. But squirting seed didn’t
work. I couldn’t empty myself of the cold burning terror that crawled
through my guts.
 Grasping at straws, I called my agent in Century City. If a miracle
happened and I got the men’s grooming gig, I’d be independent and Bella
could go fuck herself. The response was encouraging. My tests were with
the agency running the campaign and they liked them a lot. I was riding
high on the shortlist. But those decisions had to be made cautiously, and beg
as I might, I couldn’t get anything firmer than supportive advice to be
patient. Not much use on a day when it felt like I was sinking in a sea of
shit.
I smoked and drank a bottle of Coke. I thought about Powell’s last
words. The freezer … If there was a freezer anywhere with something
useful in it, it would be at Apricot Lane for sure. I could have driven over
there and done a little checking. But I didn’t. I told myself that this might
all be a test, that Bella might only want to see if she could trust me and that
if I kept my head down and kept cool, it was possible that everything could
still be fixed. Silence and nonaction might make her see she had nothing to
fear from me.
I scanned a few mags—Brooke Shields had had a bridal shower in New
York. Drew Carey had received a bid of four million for a proposed book
about life. Gary Oldman was slated to suck up part of a ninety-million-
dollar budget playing Dr. Smith in a big-screen Lost in Space and Brad Pitt
now owned five houses on the same block.
But these reports from heaven couldn’t kill the anxiety that twisted me.
I needed a stronger distraction to shield me from images of a disintegrating
future. I needed something that would tear me out of myself for a while.
So I went down to the drag before dark and asked indiscreet questions
about snuff movies. I spent a while looking, but the closest I came was a
guy selling cassettes from the trunk of his car in a side street. I checked the
product on a Watchman he had wired to a VCR, but I was disappointed. It
was just road accident footage he’d spliced into straight hard-core. I gave
up and checked an ATM. The monthly payment from Bella had gone into
my account. It gave me hope that things hadn’t bottomed out yet. But I
couldn’t really be sure. She might just have not gotten around to canceling
the auto payment yet.
In the early evening I sat in a café on Melrose drinking black coffee and
reading the paper. The dead man found a couple of days ago in Westwood
had been identified as an ex-cop. He’d died from a heart attack, possibly
during sex. Police would like to interview the woman they assumed he was
with.
A few lines on page five. It didn’t seem much of a marker for someone
as monstrous as Ryan. Tomorrow it’d be even less, screwed up in the
bottom of a bin or stuck to the sole of somebody’s shoe. Death. Just like I’d
always known it was. When you’re gone, you’re gone. Unless you get
yourself on the screen first.
And on the gossip pages, a snap that made me grind my teeth—Bella
and Lorn, out the night before at the opening of a new boutique, chummy
together, radiant smiles, cute little cocktail dresses. Prime exposure, their
names under the photo.
I ate some salad-type thing that made me gag, but I figured with the
men’s grooming contract starting to look possible it’d be smart to be smart.
Then I sat for half an hour smoking and thinking. Nothing of much use
occurred to me, so after three Southerns I dragged my ass out of the café
and into the Mustang.
I cruised. Movement through the streets was a lullaby. Neon under burnt
lemon sky slid by in time-lapse streaks, tweaking peripheral vision and
interrupting thought, keeping a loose lid on my anxiety. Down to Santa
Monica to look at the sea. No answers there. No beauty either—the water
lay heavily against the coast like a planet-wide oil slick. The tramps looked
worse than ever.
I took PCH and spent half the night driving to Santa Barbara.
I left the top down and my body got cold. The numbness was pleasant.
When I got there I walked out into the ocean on a pier that was part of the
marina and looked back inland at the mountains and the houses with their
warm lights scattered through the foothills. Around me white boats rose on
the swell.

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 Chapter Forty-Four
At Willow Glen there wasn’t anything to do but wander through the rooms
and look at my possessions: my furniture, my technology, my clothes. It
wasn’t a particularly comforting occupation as I was acutely aware that, like
the house itself, everything was in Bella’s name.
Out by the pool the palms rubbed their leaves together as though they
couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen to me next. I watched them
move in the breeze that came up the canyon in the afternoons and figured it
might not be so bad to be like them, to just grow out of the ground and not
have to deal with the endless disappointments that come with mobility and
free will.
Blue sky and sunshine. I sat in the middle of the lawn, my ears plugged
with toilet paper, and stared up at the sky until bright dots of light danced in
front of my eyes. It was pointless, I knew. I couldn’t escape the stigma of
not being famous simply by pretending nothing existed, but without those
brief moments of nonthinking I would certainly have been crushed by the
reality of what was happening to me.
Time passed slowly. I tried to tell myself that each minute was taking
me closer to a point where Bella would forgive me and allow me back into
the only world where real happiness was possible. But it wasn’t easy
maintaining that kind of belief when there was nothing to support it.
I stopped leaving the house. Someone on the street might have
recognized me and tried to make conversation and it would have been
painful maintaining the lie that I was still a presenter. Food came in by
courier and a news stand delivered every magazine they carried on the lives
of famous people. I had invites to parties and screenings that I got while I
was on the show, but I didn’t use them. They were for another person, after
all.
I didn’t make plans for the future, I didn’t think about the past. Even
when my Century City agent called to say it was down to me and one other
guy for the men’s grooming gig I couldn’t get excited. With the way things
had been going lately it seemed an utter waste of time to seriously think I
might luck into something of that magnitude. All I did was consume media,
burying myself under an avalanche of gossip in the hope that it would make
me forget who I was and what had happened to me.
One afternoon I spent an hour running the Tri Star identity tag over and
over on video—that flying horse coming at you through the sky. I wanted to
be in there, in with the clouds and the golden light—that distillation of
Californian movie dreams. Johnny Depp and Kate Moss must have been in
there somewhere, along with all the others, all loved up and wrapped safely
in their fame. One of my magazines had an article on the house Depp had
bought that used to belong to Bela Lugosi. I would have liked to rig the
place with a camera so I could see what the two of them did when they
weren’t being photographed or filmed. I didn’t want to see them fucking,
although that would have been pretty cool. What I was interested in was
what happened at breakfast and times like that, times when other people
ploughed the boredom of their lives with meaningless activity. It would be
comforting to think that even with their money and their celebrity they still
shared in some of the same everyday banalities. But I bet they didn’t. I bet
everything in their lives was extraordinary, right down to toasting a slice of
bread or taking a dump.
It occurred to me occasionally that it might be better to cut myself off
from that kind of Hollywood speculation altogether. That way maybe I
could drone along frying burgers and not want anything else. Narrow, but
happy. Or, if not happy, at least not tortured every minute of every day by
the desire to be someone I wasn’t. But then, if you don’t have a dream …
Three weeks passed without a word from Bella. I’d hoped she’d call long
before this. Lorn was the same. I rang her apartment constantly but no one
ever answered. I knew, I just knew, she was spending her time with Bella at
Malibu.
One night the two of them actually turned up on TV together. Some fan
show was running a clip of stars coming out of an opening and I caught
them in the background. Holding hands, for fucksake. It looked like the
camera was about to get interested in 28 FPS presenter Lorn, but then
someone more famous came out and the angle changed. I was taking the
show in broadcast so I couldn’t run it again, but even in the few seconds
they were on screen it was impossible to mistake the absorption with which
Bella regarded her partner.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit. In fact, next evening, the image of
them standing so cozily together, combined with my accumulated isolation,
pushed me out into the Mustang and down to Santa Monica.
I was lucky. The morgue was quiet and the Japanese guy was on duty.
He looked anxious when he saw me, like maybe he thought I was going to
make a habit of this and end up getting him busted. But I had a lot of money
and his fat face smoothed out when I showed him the notes. He had some
kind of food dried to a crust in the corner of his mouth. It fell off when he
started speaking.
“Not good to take one out back now. You do it here. I lock the door, but
you don’t take too long, okay? What you want, something hairy like before?
We have a selection.”
He bolted the door to the outside world and pulled open drawers. I
pointed to three young women. He didn’t look happy when I said I wanted
them all, but I threw money at him until he agreed.
On the floor. Three dead naked bodies pushed close together in a row. I
stripped down and climbed onto the one in the middle and worked my way
inside her. She was much colder than the one I’d done with Ryan because
she was straight from the fridge. But that didn’t spoil anything. All three of
them were that way, a bed of cold gray flesh. Fatso was itching to do sentry
duty, but he had to earn his money first. I made him haul the other two
bodies and lay them facedown across my back. I felt the rough cunt hair of
one against the crack of my ass, the tits and ribs of the other close to my
shoulders. He left me to go stand by the door and I just lay there for a while,
quiet and still under the pressure.
The woman I had my dick inside had fucked-up teeth and her mouth
smelled bad. I turn her head sideways and pressed my face into the base of
her neck. I had my arms under hers, holding onto her shoulders. I felt
protected and secure, but it was difficult to move and I had to grind rather
than thrust so the others wouldn’t roll off. Toward the end, though, I
couldn’t help jerking about a bit more and the girl across my ass flipped
over and rolled to the back of my knees. Her head hit the stone floor and it
made this thunking sound that was just so empty, just so … dead, that the
reality of what I was doing drove home like a stake and I spurted my guts
into the lifeless gash beneath me.
I wanted to stay there with my dick going soft inside the meat, breathing
in the scent of the bodies—clammy like the stale water that collects in the
defrost section of a fridge. If someone had asked me right then how I was
feeling I’d have had to say comforted. These women used to be people.
They’d lived, they’d had chances, but now they couldn’t do anything at all.
No threats.
Human form without danger.
But when the Japanese guy saw I wasn’t pumping anymore he started
pulling them off and loading them back in their trays.

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 Chapter Forty-Five
Lorn took a seat in a zone café on Olympic. I’d followed her from Burbank
through late afternoon traffic and, what with freeway-generated road rage
and the bombers I dropped earlier, I was feeling slightly fritzed. This
unscheduled meeting was uncool. Totally. I knew it, but I couldn’t help
myself. I had to know what was going on. I had to know if there was ever
going to be another chance for me.
I walked into the slick self-righteousness of the place and stood just
inside the door. She looked up and saw me and her face went blank. It
wasn’t encouraging, it wasn’t at all like the best-case scenario of happy
surprise I’d daydreamed my way through before sleep the night before. But
my need was great enough to armor me against this initial knee-jerk
unpleasantness. I walked down an aisle of molded plastic and sat opposite
her. She’d already ordered and a waitress swayed up as I was settling and
put a plate of correctly balanced protein and carbohydrate in front of her.
Lorn waited until she was gone before she said anything.
“What do you want?”
“You didn’t answer my calls.”
“And you expected … what?”
“You can’t still be pissed off about the review slot.”
“You didn’t tell me about Bella. We were sleeping together and you
didn’t say shit.”
“She told me not to.”
“Mmm, such a good boy.”
“Give me a break. I lost everything because of you.”
“Because of me … You lost it because you couldn’t resist fucking
someone famous. It could have been anyone, I just happened to be
accessible. How could you think she wouldn’t find out? She owns half the
fucking studio.”
“I don’t know, it didn’t seem to matter at the time.”
“Don’t you fucking dare pull that emotional manipulation shit with me.
What do you want? She’d be pissed off if she knew I was talking to you.”
 “She told you not to?”
“You don’t have to be Einstein.”
“Sounds intimate.”
“She’s going to make them syndicate me next year.”
When I heard this, I knew there was no point asking Lorn how long she
was going to stay with Bella, and even less trying to persuade her to end the
relationship so I could take my place again at Malibu. Syndication is the
golden prize that every presenter covets and Lorn would hang out until
doomsday for it.
She ate some of her food. When she spoke again her voice was a little
softer than it had been.
“I know it must hurt, what happened to you, but it’s between you and
Bella. I can’t do anything about it. It isn’t fair to ask me.”
“I didn’t.”
“But that’s why you’re here.”
“I guess … Look, Lorn, you should be careful with Bella. I know her a
lot better than you and she’s not what she seems. You think you’re using
her, but it’s the other way around.”
Lorn put her fork down and her face went flinty.
“How stupid do you think I am?”
“Believe me, she’s going to ask for more than you’ll ever want to give.
She’s dangerous.”
“Jesus, try and maintain some dignity.”
“I’m just telling you. She’s involved in a lot of bad stuff. You could get
hurt, and I don’t mean emotionally. Take my word for it.”
Lorn stared at me in disbelief, then stood and slid out from behind the
table.
“That’s an all-time high in pathetic. Stay away from me, Jack.”
She left the restaurant without looking back. After she’d gone I sat for a
long time kicking myself and trying not to think about what would happen
if she felt the need to share the afternoon’s conversation with Bella.
Eventually the waitress drifted over and asked if I wished to nourish
myself. I didn’t have the energy to reply.

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 Chapter Forty-Six
Next day what was bound to happen happened. An expression of Lorn’s
loyalties. A lawyer and a couple of large guys walked into Willow Glen
while Baywatch was on and I was doing the best I could to imagine what it
was like being Pamela. The lawyer showed me Bella’s signature on some
papers and told me I had half an hour to quit the premises. I made a token
attempt at refusal but it didn’t get me anywhere. She owned the place and
everything in it and my property rights numbered exactly zero.
All three of them followed me around while I packed, making sure I
didn’t take anything that couldn’t legitimately be classed as a personal gift.
This amounted to some clothes, my photos, the video from Ryan, my watch,
and a wallet. And they went through that, too. The only plastic they let me
keep was my ATM card—access to the cash in my account, but no credit
beyond.
I moved in a stupor. I felt like the people you see being walked to the
edge of a pit in Nazi archive footage. But even through the frozen-gut
brainfuck I felt the stab of what they saved for last.
Out front. I was about to dump my bags in the trunk of the Mustang but
the lawyer shook his head and put his hand out for the key. Insult to injury.
But how else would something like that have gone down? They let me call
a cab, then they took my mobile off me.
Waiting with them for the taxi was uncomfortable. The lawyer took a
fresh set of papers from his briefcase and flipped through them, no doubt
readying himself to dispossess someone else. The big guys just stared at
me. When the cab came, one of them opened the door and the other one
pushed me carefully through it.
The drive from Laurel Canyon to Hollywood was long enough for my head
to start working again. But thinking didn’t give me much comfort. With
Rex dead and Lorn busy sucking Bella’s cunt, the opportunities L.A.
offered for some kind of emotional succor were limited to motel rooms and
hookers. I needed a hole to crawl into, somewhere to autopsy what had
happened and figure out if I could recover from it.
I had the cab trawl Sunset, along by the motels. Several blocks of
twoand three-story courts, all of them so scarred with neon the place looked
like some kind of accommodation Vegas. There was no way to tell one from
another so I got out at the Palm Grove. Apart from the flashing outline of an
oasis, the wall that fronted the street was blank—no windows, no balconies,
just slab concrete up and down.
My room wasn’t bad. It had twin beds, a TV, and a big mirror on the
wall. The bathroom was at the back and at the front by the door there was a
window covered with a blind so people going by on the walkway couldn’t
see in. Two stories down, in the center of the court, the pool looked faded
and unused. I was sure if I stayed there long enough I’d see trash
accumulate under the water.
I had about ten grand left out of what I’d managed to hold onto from my
snack-food ad and Bella’s last monthly payment. I could survive for a
while, but it wouldn’t last forever.
I turned the TV on. I took a piss and unpacked my bags, then I walked
up and down trying to think. Ever since the night I’d walked in on Bella and
Lorn having dinner together at Malibu I’d held onto the hope that things
would work out, that my relationship with Bella would eventually
regenerate itself. Now it was significantly more than obvious that that
wasn’t going to happen. Getting fired from the show might have been
reversible, but eviction from my house and repossession of my car, without
even a phone call from her, smacked of finality.
I considered my position. Incurring more of her enmity was a daunting
prospect, but what did I have to lose? She’d taken everything from me
already. Public exposure and money are drugs that once tasted can never be
washed from the body, and I had no intention of living without them if there
was any way at all of reconnecting to a supply. It was time to get a little
leverage on the situation. Time to see if what Powell had said while he was
dying meant anything.
By the time I came to that decision, though, it was too late to go pick up
the Prelude—getting tough would have to wait until tomorrow. Instead, I
wandered around the strip long enough to score a selection of pills and
some fried chicken. A little while after that, things didn’t seem so
immediate.

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 Chapter Forty-Seven
Four months in storage and the Prelude ran as smooth as ever. It didn’t have
the grunt of the Mustang and nobody turned to look, but it beat walking.
The sledgehammer I’d bought that evening from a hardware store in Santa
Monica thunked about in the trunk as I took corners.
The streets were quiet once I got through the flats of Beverly Hills and
they got quieter still when I hit Peavine Canyon.
Apricot Avenue was as dead as the other times I’d been there, no people
moving about, no cars on the road. I coasted slowly to the end and parked.
No light in the house, but that didn’t mean anything. The basement didn’t
have windows and if anyone was home tonight that was where they’d be.
I went carefully with the garage rolladoor, levering it up an inch at a
time with the long handle of my hammer until I could see through the gap
that there were no cars inside. Bella might have been there, checking on her
instruments, maybe even working on a donor. Without Powell or me to
scout for her the possibility was slim, and I couldn’t see Lorn taking over
the role, but it had been something to factor in nevertheless. The absence of
the 850ci meant I’d have free run of the place and I felt vindictively gleeful
forcing the door until the mechanism broke and let the jointed metal roll up
the rest of the way nice and smooth.
The door into the house proper had been replaced since my last visit. It
had a couple of locks on it and a thicker sheet of steel. But my hammer and
I had expected something like that and we went to work confident that a
little sweat would be rewarded. It was, but I felt light-headed by the end of
it.
Powell had said a fridge, so at least I knew what I was looking for—
kind of. There was one in the operating room, I’d seen it before and it
seemed as good a place as any to start. I was planning on a quick
professional search, but when I pushed through the swing doors from the
pre-op area I couldn’t help taking a few moments for myself. All the hard
edges and the glittering steel gave me the start of a hard-on. It wasn’t
because I was remembering what Bella did to herself there. It had more to
do with the alien starkness of the place, a place without the usual
sympathies humans demand from their environments. I turned on the cluster
light that hung like a great inquiring head on its swing arm. It didn’t let
anything hide. Under its harsh mercury limning the vinyl surface of the
table shone almost silver.
The fridge stood against one wall and looked like something you’d find
in an undersized kitchen. The stuff in it didn’t mean anything to me—just
vials of drugs I didn’t recognize waiting to be sucked into syringes. If
Powell had been hinting at something in here, his dying breath had been
wasted. But I knew his junkie condescension would have placed me
somewhere close to the bottom of the brain-power league and I figured
whatever it was I was searching for had to be at least halfway obvious. So I
kept looking. I checked every room in the basement, even those I was sure
didn’t have fridges. After a while I found a storeroom—shelves of
disposables: gloves, gowns, scalpels, dressings, along with more reusable-
looking equipment made from cream-colored plastic and chrome steel. And,
in one corner, a fridge humming away to itself. Only it wasn’t your average
cooling unit. It was round and orange and looked like a scaled-down
version of something you’d go to the bottom of the ocean in. Pipes and
warning stickers cluttered up the sides and instead of a door it had a kind of
plug thing recessed into the top, about a foot across.
A long pair of heavily insulated gloves and a set of tongs hung from a
hook on the wall next to it. It was pretty obvious what they were supposed
to be used for, so I did.
Inside, once a load of vapor cleared, the first thing I saw was a stack of
frozen blood in wrinkled plastic slabs. I used the tongs to lift them out one
by one. They felt hard enough to shatter. Unless it was all Karen’s, it didn’t
mean much. I couldn’t see even fuck-ups like Powell and Bella draining
someone. More likely it was just stock to be used in transfusions during the
kidney operations. But the fridge held one or two other things as well.
Down at the bottom, under the last slab, I found a couple of small plastic
packets with creamy liquid frozen inside. And something else, very flat and
thin, wrapped in cling film. I put the blood back and closed up the fridge. I
took the other things upstairs to the lounge and sat around waiting for them
to thaw.
 It didn’t take long—I wasn’t defrosting a chicken, after all. I squished
the pale liquid around. It felt slimy under the plastic and it didn’t take a
major leap to figure it for semen. Or work out whose it was—somehow
Bella had managed to stash a few spurts from her fuck sessions with
Powell. I felt a thrill of elation. Finding it here removed Bella’s best
protection against being marked the killer—the impossibility of her
spunking up into Karen’s guts. Now it was obvious all she had had to do
was empty one of little these packets into the body.
Of course there might have been other explanations. Powell could have
been storing the semen in the freezer himself, or it could have come from
one of Bella’s male donors. But I was pretty sure that that wasn’t the case.
Powell didn’t strike me as a guy who had any great desire to preserve his
genes for the benefit of mankind, and there was no reason at all why Bella
would want to save jism from any of the losers they’d dragged in off the
street.
I figured I had Bella pretty well fucked, what with the video and an
explanation for the goo inside Karen. And when I unwrapped the thing in
clingfilm, I was certain of it—a square of skin with an Egyptian scarab
tattooed onto it in black ink. The square of skin that had been missing from
Karen’s shoulder blade when they found her in the park. Not a thing Powell
would want to hang onto, coming as it did from someone he loathed. But
definitely something Bella might treasure.
I put the bags of semen and the tattoo on a coffee table in front of me
and lit a cigarette. I thought about Powell. His last words had led me to this
haul. That he’d known it was here had to mean he’d known about the
murder, about its incriminating specifics. And knowing these specifics he
could not have avoided the conclusion that Bella had been planning to
frame him for it. But the poor fuck had been so hung up on her he hadn’t let
on, even to save himself until right at the end when his guts were in his lap.
And, looking back on it, remembering the tone of his voice at the time, it
occurred to me that even then he hadn’t been trying to destroy his daughter,
but to rob me of my self-righteousness, my self-generated certainty that he
was guilty. He’d known I’d wanted it to be him, that I’d blinkered myself to
anything that might have forced me to confront the possibility that Bella
was a killer. And he hadn’t been about to allow me the comfort of
maintaining that illusion.
 If Bella and Powell had been co-killers, everything was cool. Powell
had deserved his death and I had something to threaten Bella with. On the
other hand, if it had been Bella by herself—and if I was truthful with
myself, that was what I now believed—then the semen as evidence would
still function, but Powell had died without reason. And that meant I’d
helped kill an innocent man, or at least a man innocent of Karen’s murder.
I forced myself to relive that night, to bring up again the image of the
blood-soaked car interior, Powell’s belly bursting open, the smell of his
insides. I tried to feel bad about it. I tried to feel angry with myself for
doing it, with Bella for manipulating me into it. But dredging up those kind
of emotions right then was a nonstarter. I was too busy basking in the
knowledge that before me on the coffee table I had the means to force a
return to my preferred lifestyle.

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 Chapter Forty-Eight
I connected with Bella through her machine. She hadn’t returned any of the
messages I’d left since she took 28 FPS away from me, but I recorded a few
lines about wanting to discuss something Ryan had told me the last time I
saw him alive, and she was on the line before midday.
We sat in her video suite, the obvious place. Bella had her hair tied back
and was wearing a robe with nothing on underneath. As she shifted position
in her chair the silky material slipped open to show her cunt. She didn’t
bother to cover herself and I caught the scent of fish.
I played my cassette and explained how there should have been stitches
on Karen’s belly. Bella spent more time watching me than the screen and
the satisfied look on her face gave me a bad feeling that right from the start
things weren’t going to go quite as well as I’d hoped. For an absurd
moment the whole purpose of the meeting seemed to have been reversed,
that rather than accusing her of murder, I was there to admit my guilt at
being in possession of something dangerous to her. I did my best to fight it
down, but I knew my voice sounded weak.
“Ryan had it figured the night you killed him, it took me a little longer.
What did you think, we weren’t going to see it?”
“Oh, I thought you’d see it all right. But I was quite sure you’d be
reluctant to recognize it.”
“Because of your money?”
“You and Ryan were very similar. You see money as life’s ultimate
validation. It makes you easy to predict.”
“Powell didn’t kill Karen.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“You made this tape. You knew he’d take a copy and that sooner or later
we’d find it. And you knew how we’d read it.”
“I knew how you’d want to read it.”
“How long had you been planning it?”
“Killing Karen? I didn’t really plan it at all.”
“But the tape was made before you took her kidney out.”
 “The tape was just one I had, it wasn’t part of any plan, at least not until
later. I shot it in Powell’s apartment to hurt him, to rub salt in the wound, so
to speak. That’s all. The planning only came after I realized what it could be
used for. Erase my copy, make up a story about the bracelet … Almost too
easy.”
“Why did you kill her?”
“Do you care?”
I didn’t say anything. Bella shrugged, rewound the tape, and started it
playing again slow motion. She watched it as she spoke.
“Karen came back much sooner than I’d expected. We hadn’t planned to
meet again for a couple of weeks after she’d recovered from her operation,
but she had some trouble at home. The man she was living with threw her
out and she had nowhere to go. I let her stay, of course. But knowing she
was accessible, that she was a woman who had no real prohibitions against
selling parts of herself, was a constant temptation. The door had already
been opened, you see, and I wanted to go back. After a week I offered to
buy her appendix and she agreed.”
“Only you didn’t stop with her appendix.”
“No. It’s a much simpler operation to perform so I was working without
Powell. I hadn’t planned to do anything other than what I’d paid for. But
being there alone, with her laid out on the table so … available, it seemed
cowardly to limit myself once I’d started. I took out almost everything she
had.”
“But why?”
“I’ve told you before, the operations are a test, even with outcasts they
require an effort of will. With Karen, when I took her kidney, I moved to
another level. She wasn’t anonymous. She was my lover, I felt a great deal
for her. And to damage her, even surgically, required proportionally more
from me. The second time the challenge was even greater.”
“But you rose to it valiantly.”
“We only achieve self-mastery by testing ourselves, Jack. It’s the only
way to become more than we are. But I don’t expect you to understand.”
“What about Powell, did he understand?”
Bella laughed.
“Hardly, he wanted to leave the countr y. He was so fright-ened he
removed her kidney scar, he thought it could be used to trace us. I thought
he was being ridiculous, but I suppose Ryan proved me wrong in that
respect. I wouldn’t have involved Powell at all, but I needed his help getting
rid of the body.”
“And his thanks was that you decided to frame him. To kill him.”
“I couldn’t allow him to have something like that to hold over me.”
“He would never have told anyone.”
“Perhaps not. But it changed the dynamic of our relationship. He came
to feel that he could make demands of me. And that wasn’t something I
could tolerate. Besides, it would have been stupid not to take what steps I
could to protect myself against the possibility of investigation.”
“But he was innocent. He didn’t do anything.”
“Can you imagine what it feels like to clean your father’s come from
between your legs?”
Bella stopped the tape and turned toward me.
“If Powell means so much to you, perhaps you should think about this
—he only died because Ryan came to Malibu. And Ryan only came to
Malibu because you brought him here. Without you, Jack, Powell would
still be alive.”
“I’m not buying it. I want my life back.”
“You still have your life.”
“My house, the car, the show, all of it. I want it back.”
“But you told Lorn I was dangerous. That was … indiscreet.”
“Either make things the way they were, or this tape is going to the
police.”
“Oh, Jack, I really hoped you wouldn’t do this. It was so much nicer
when I could pretend you loved me.”
“I’m serious.”
“What does the tape really show? A girl masturbating. It shows I had
contact with her, I suppose. But she was a prostitute and there’s nothing to
say I ever saw her again. It certainly won’t support an accusation of murder.
What’s to say I didn’t find it on the street, even?”
“Your other tape, the one with the donors. She’s on that too.”
“Already erased. And you’ve forgotten the semen in her body. A little
hard to lay that at my door, don’t you think?”
I took the tattoo and one of the bags of come out of my jacket and
dropped them on the console in front of her. She didn’t move to touch them.
 “Powell’s last laugh, I presume.”
“Right at the end your attraction for him kinda lost its hold. I guess
being setup to be killed does that to a guy.”
“An event in which you played such an integral role.”
“What’s with the tattoo? Was she so disposable you thought you’d
forget her if you didn’t keep a piece of her?”
“I’m not going to forget her, Jack. We had them done together, at the
same place, on the same day. It’s an unusual design and there was a slim
possibility it might have connected us. It had to be removed. I probably
shouldn’t have kept it, but I have a sentimental side.”
I snorted and pointed to the packet of semen.
“Cute idea.”
“Effective, at least.”
“You must have been over the moon when you figured blackmail wasn’t
Ryan’s only bag. He was ready-made. You got to get rid of Powell without
any of that nasty fuss an investigation would have involved.”
“I got something else as well. I got to link you to Powell’s death. Funny
how one thing leads to another.”
“It was Ryan who forced me into that, not you.”
“Who do you think persuaded him it was so important in the first
place?”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m not going to argue about it. The fact is, even if you can explain the
semen, you won’t go to the police. You’re too heavily implicated yourself.
Now that Ryan’s not here they’d probably hold you solely responsible.”
“There’s nothing to prove I had anything to do with it.”
“Actually, there is.”
Bella popped out the tape of Karen, chose another from the cupboard,
and ran it. The screen showed a pair of kitchen gloves covered with blood,
lying on a sheet of newspaper.
“From Ryan. They have your fingerprints inside, I believe.”
“I don’t fucking believe this! You set me up!”
She ejected the tape and put it away.
“I bought some insurance. I hope I don’t have to use it.”
A high-speed about-face seemed the only possible course of action
given this less-than-encouraging development. I put a lot of effort into it.
 “Look, I wasn’t really going to show that stuff to the police. I was just
trying to get my life back. I mean, I can’t take it, Bella. Don’t you
understand?”
“You shouldn’t have said what you did to Lorn.”
“I know. Jesus, isn’t there anything I can do?”
I took the tape of Karen, put it in the machine, and erased it.
“There, I was just bullshitting. I’d never have gone to the police. You
know I’d never do anything like that. Don’t you feel anything for me
anymore?”
“This isn’t about feeling, it’s about safety.”
“But you are safe. Keep the tattoo and the semen. I can’t do anything
without them.”
“There was another packet.”
“Yeah, sure, here.”
I took the second wrap of semen out of my pocket and handed it to her.
“Now you’ve got everything. Please, Bella, I’m begging you. Will you
give me the show back, at least?”
Bella weighed the semen in her hand for a moment, then reached out
and killed the power to the video console.
“Give me your number. I’ll consider it.”
“Excellent!”
I passed her one of the Palm Grove cards, hoping to see her smile a little
and let me know things were okay between us again. But she didn’t. She
just looked coolly at me and pulled her robe closed.
“I’m not promising I’ll call, Jack.”
The drive back to the motel wasn’t pleasant. The ocean looked cold and
unfriendly under a half moon and I couldn’t stop thinking what a pathetic
shit I was. My grand plan of making Bella give me what I wanted had come
to nothing, had crumbled to dust against the force of her will. I’d gone in
with evidence that should have destroyed her and I’d come out with
nothing.

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 Chapter Forty-Nine
TV, TV, TV. It made me mad with wanting. I watched it nonstop. Days had
passed and Bella hadn’t called and it was getting harder to keep a lid on the
feeling that it was never going to happen, that I was going to be left forever
in this nightmare world of cheap motels and nonidentity.
Sometimes I went outside, mostly to look at the colors in the sky near
evening. I walked up and down the street in front of the motel trying to feel
connected to the city. But everything was foreign to me, like I was lost in
some Asian city where I couldn’t understand the language or recognize
even the most fundamental patterns of behavior.
I had the management hook up a VCR and I watched the jewelry-shop
raiders fuck the young cleaner to death. I watched it over and over and
wanked endlessly, trying to expel my growing anxiety. I bought a second
TV set so Melrose and Baywatch and 90210 could run at the same time. But
nothing worked, and each time I shot my load over the carpet I was left in a
state of dissatisfaction that bordered on rage.
Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow, Johnny Depp and Kate Moss, Keanu
Reeves, Matthew McConaughey, Chris O’Donnell, Leonardo DiCaprio,
Drew Barrymore, Linda Hamilton, Winona, Sigourney, Woody, Pamela …
Jesus, I couldn’t stand it. The collected media of the United States
bombarded me with these people. I closed my eyes and blocked my ears,
but it was too late. They were all already stuck inside my head and there
was no way to ever get them out.
I swallowed pills—Rohypnol, Valium, Lorazepam, anything to help me
cope with the onslaught, to buffer the image of these movie stars who had
grown so gigantic in relation to myself. But chemicals weren’t enough.
They slowed things down but they couldn’t rid me of the feeling that I
didn’t exist. And eventually, as Bella still hadn’t called, I was forced to go
out and look for a more effective means of escape.
The evening was smogged and the sky looked like it was going to rain
—dirty black clouds with bleeding bellies. A warm breeze came down off
the hills smelling of eucalyptus and jasmine. I had all the windows open
and the air stormed through the car. For a while the roaring it made
blanketed the screaming inside my head. At red lights I turned the air
conditioner on to keep up the noise.
The drag hadn’t changed in my absence. It still stank of fast food and
cunt, its neon still rolled in waves of dusty color across the bare thighs and
shoulders of tiredly strutting whores. I was too early for the high-density
trade, but people seemed to be moving around pretty fast all the same.
Maybe it was the pressure in the air, maybe they all wanted to do whatever
they had to do before the rain came. I parked and went looking for Rosie,
the hooker who’d let Ryan shit in her mouth.
She wasn’t in her usual doorway. I checked a few of the surrounding
streets without luck, then gave up and went searching for a substitute back
in the main flow. There were a lot of women to choose from, there always
were, but I had difficulty picking one. I got close a couple of times, but
there was always something that put me off. Maybe they looked too clever,
maybe they looked too strong.
I told myself I should get back in the car and go home, take some pills,
and have a wank. But I was driven by a body hunger that wouldn’t let go, a
desire that didn’t come out of my head, but generated somewhere down at
cellular level, indefinable and uncontrollable.
I made circuit after circuit of the area. It got late and it started to rain. I
walked until my legs ached and the heavy men outside the live sex shows
started giving me suspicious looks. The uglier whores who’d been waiting
for trade about as long as I’d been trawling began to call to me each time I
passed. The night slid into a time-lapse blur of bright light and water until,
around two in the morning, I passed Rosie’s doorway on an off chance, and
she was there.
She was wearing a tight pink dress that didn’t look too good on her
untoned body. But she had tits and a cunt and I knew she was fucked up
enough to agree to just about anything.
In a taxi on the way to some rotting hot-sheet dump on Lexington she
asked me about my diet and the size of my bowel movements. It was
obvious she didn’t remember me from before.
The motel had a main block and a few bungalows out back. A couple of
junkers with bumper stickers that said something about guns were parked
off the street in a lot strewn with weeds and empty cans. It looked like the
kind of place that catered to fugitives.
At the desk I gave a fake name, paid in cash, and avoided eye contact.
The check-in guy stared at Rosie and licked his lips. His breath smelled of
bourbon. We got one of the bungalows. Not really secluded or quiet, but
separate at least.
Inside, Rosie spread out her sheet of plastic, took off her clothes, and
lay on her back. Her body looked pale. I could see the line of her cunt lips
sticking through the hair between her legs. She kept opening her mouth as
wide as it would go then closing it again.
I took my clothes off slowly, allowing myself to recognize at last what I
wanted from the night. It was kind of frightening knowing I wouldn’t be
able to make excuses to myself the next day. That I wouldn’t be looking
back on a body Ryan had supplied or one I happened across like Rex,
somebody already dead. And that I wouldn’t have been forced into it like I
was with Powell.
She started to mutter about wanting me to hurry up, so I squatted and let
her rim me while I collected myself. When my ass was thoroughly clean I
climbed off and told her it would turn me on more if she was tied up. It was
cool with her and I ripped up one of the sheets and bound her hands behind
her back. I would have liked to tie her feet to something as well, but there
wasn’t anything close enough.
All these arrangements felt like they were happening somewhere
outside my head. What I was more consciously occupied with was the sight
of the woman on the floor—the bright fluoro light that fell so harshly
against her, punching her into my retinas, making her superreal. That and a
rabid impatience to put my dick inside her and feel whatever it was you felt
when someone died underneath you.
I climbed on top and pushed into her cunt. She started complaining that
the deal was she got to eat my shit first and that her hands were
uncomfortable behind her back. I listened to every word she said, I looked
at her as hard as I could, trying to absorb every detail of her appearance—
the workings of her face, the feel of her body moving under mine, her heat.
Her life.
I told her I was going to fuck first then shit, and eventually she shut up.
After she’d been quiet for a while, after I’d breathed in the scent of her hair
and her skin and her pussy, I put my hands around her neck.
She didn’t realize what was happening at first because I’d never done it
before and I wasn’t sure how much pressure to use. Absurdly I had this
notion that I didn’t want to hurt her, that I should be trying to do it as
painlessly as possible. But of course that wasn’t going to get the job done,
so I pressed down hard with both thumbs at the base of her throat. Maybe
the middle would have been a better place, but I couldn’t stand the feel of
the cartilage there.
She got the idea then all right and started rolling from side to side,
trying to throw me off. She couldn’t scream because my hold was too tight,
but she made some really quite alarming choking noises. They sounded so
awful I almost stopped. But the way her hips bucked against me and the
warmth of her piss as her bladder let go felt so good that I didn’t.
At least not until someone started hammering on the door.
I froze, but the hammering continued and whoever was doing it started
shouting.
“Hey, buddy, open up! I wanna ask you something!”
The check-in guy. I let go of Rosie’s throat. She’d passed out, but I
jammed some sheet into her mouth just in case. Then I got off her and
yelled to the guy outside, asking what he wanted.
“Let me in. I can’t stand here shouting through the door, people are
trying to sleep.”
I looked at Rosie lying on the floor in her pool of piss. She wasn’t too
good, but she was alive. I could see her tits move as she breathed. But that
was all that moved, she was out cold. The guy started banging again. It was
obvious he wasn’t going to fuck off. He sounded drunk.
I opened the door a couple of inches and peered around it. At that angle
he couldn’t see Rosie.
“What do you want?”
His skin was oily and he hadn’t shaved in about three days. His hair was
oily too, stuck down flat on his head with some kind of old-fashioned
dressing. He grinned through the opening.
“Come on, buddy, you know what I want. I saw that piece you brought
in here, I got eyes. That kinda thing could get you kicked out. Get you
busted too, using the premises for immoral purposes.”
“Fuck off.”
 “She’s a hooker. Am I right or am I right?”
He giggled a bit at this and staggered out of my line of vision for a
moment. When he lurched back he was holding up a quarter-empty bottle of
Jack Daniel’s, waving it in front of my face.
“I thought maybe you and me and her could all have a drink together.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hey, don’t be like that. Sitting on your ass all night gets a guy hot, you
know? It won’t hurt you none to share her around. I got money.”
“Fuck off.”
I tried to close the door but he stuck his foot in it.
“No need to be unfriendly, not when I’m offering my liquor. You shut
this door, I’m just gonna to get my pass key out and open it up again.”
I looked over my shoulder at Rosie. She was still out and it looked like
she was going to stay that way for a while.
“Okay, you can throw one into her, but she’s pretty out of it right now.
She took a load of pills and shit.”
“Buddy, I don’t care if she’s in a coma.”
“Let me get some pants on.”
He took his foot out of the door and I closed it. I went over to Rosie and
shook her. She didn’t respond but her breathing was nice and even. I took
the gag out of her mouth, undid her hands, hid the ripped sheet under the
bed, and put my clothes on. I figured if I let the fuckwit get started I could
be long gone by the time he realized anything was wrong. When I let him
into the room his face lit up.
“Hey, out of it is right. What’s with all the water? You trying to wake
her up?”
“It’s piss. She lets fly when she passes out.”
“Wow, wish I’d come around earlier. Lucky you put that plastic down, it
could have fucked up the carpet. Who goes first?”
“I already fucked her.”
“I’m the lucky guy, then.”
He opened her legs and stuck a couple of fingers into her cunt.
“Hey, this is great. I’m gonna get piss all over me, though.”
“You don’t have to fuck her.”
“Are you kidding?”
He got his cock out and gave it a few strokes. I edged toward the door.
 “Listen, man, I got to go out for cigarettes. I’ll be back. If she wakes up,
don’t listen to anything about money. I already paid her.”
“Sure thing, buddy.”
But he was too busy lifting her legs over his shoulders to pay any real
attention.
I walked fast down the street until I could flag a cab. Five minutes later
I got out halfway along the drag and walked back to where I’d left the
Prelude. A little while after that I was back at the Palm Grove, gulping pills
and making sure the door was locked.

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 Chapter Fifty
The phone woke me about midday. Bella calling with an offer of
resurrection.
“You can do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“I want your help with Lorn.”
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t had a donor for a long time. I want her kidney.”
“What does she say about it?”
“I haven’t asked her. I know what her answer would be.”
“Offer her more screen time, she’ll do whatever you want.”
“I’m using that to get her into bed. And money won’t work, she’s not
desperate enough.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Use your imagination.”
“You want to do it by force?”
“Force sounds a little melodramatic.”
“But that’s what we’re talking about, right?”
“There won’t be any violence. I’ll use a drug. I just need you to help me
carry her.”
“What’s she going to say when she wakes up?”
“What can she say? It’ll be too late by then.”
“She’ll be a bit pissed off, don’t you think?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“How are you going to take care of something like that? It’s not like she
won’t notice the scar.”
“I said I’ll take care of it. If it’s a problem, she needn’t know you’re
involved. I’ll knock her out before she sees you, and you can leave before
she comes around.”
“But Lorn’s just a person. It’s not like she’s connected to Ryan or Karen
or anything. Can’t you use someone off the street?”
“I want her.”
 “What difference does it make? A kidney’s a kidney, for god’s sake.”
“Doesn’t she remind you of someone?”
“Who?”
“Karen. She looks like Karen, Jack. Same body, same hair, just a little
less rough. I can’t believe you’ve never noticed.”
“No, I never noticed. And I don’t like the idea of you trying to relive
what you did to Karen.”
“Jack, I only want her kidney, I’m not going to kill her. Helping me
could be extremely advantageous to you.”
“How advantageous?”
“Your house and car, and I’m sure Howard could be persuaded to find
something for you on one of his shows.”
“And if that’s not enough?”
“I’m giving you a chance to get back what you lost. It’s more than you
deserve. Of course, if you’re going to be difficult I could always take
another approach, one you might find a lot less pleasant.”
“The gloves.”
“If you force me to. An evening’s work, Jack. It isn’t much of a
sacrifice to avoid a murder charge.”
She was silent for a moment, I listened to the faint hiss of static on the
line. Then Bella’s voice came again, confident and sexy: “You aren’t going
to be difficult, are you, Jack?”
After Bella hung up I sat on the edge of the bed and thought about Lorn.
She wasn’t the love of my life, but helping her get mutilated was still
something I found difficult to come to terms with. At one point I called the
studio and managed to get through to her. But when she came on the line I
didn’t say anything. I just held onto the phone and listened to her say hello a
few times and ask who it was, wanting to warn her, wanting to tell her what
Bella was planning, but unable to do it. I just couldn’t find it in me to throw
away my ticket back to the world.
Luckily, I didn’t have to suffer my conscience too long.

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 Chapter Fifty-One
Bella reeled in her fish the very next day. She wanted me to meet her at
Apricot Lane, early evening. Lorn would be with her.
I showered and changed my clothes, then sat staring out of the window
at a square of wall and a door exactly like mine on the other side of the
pool, figuring on not doing much else until it was time to head into the hills.
I hadn’t eaten anything all day except a couple of doughnuts and I felt
hollow and thin. But I guessed that was the right way to feel, considering
what I was about to have a hand in.
I was two cigarettes into a pack when my Century City agent rang and
told me to get over to his office immediately. He wouldn’t say any more on
the phone and I pretty much floored it all the way.
When I got out of the elevator all the staff were lined up to greet me.
The agent himself fountained a bottle of champagne in my face and put an
arm around my shoulders. Everyone started clapping. I’d scored the men’s
grooming gig. Locked in and irrevocable. I was going to be the guy on TV
and billboards and magazine pages all across the country. High, high
profile. Exposure to three hundred million people. They might not know my
name for a while, but walking down the street would certainly be a different
experience soon.
The gig would wipe out my entire previous existence. It would put what
I had with 28 FPS in the shade. I had a two-year contract to be the face of a
product. I was an L.A. success story. I was what other people dreamed
about.
I hung around for a while, signing papers and going through a schedule
of upcoming photo and video shoots, soaking up the attention from these
people who suddenly loved me. Then I got back in the car and drove into
the hills.
I didn’t need Bella for wealth or visibility anymore. The grooming
campaign was going to put my face in front of more people than most TV
stars, and the money from it would set me up for life. At a stroke, she’d
become obsolete.
 But that didn’t mean I could avoid the evening’s entertainment up at
Apricot Lane. Bella would find out about my windfall sooner or later and if
I messed up her kidney fix she’d strike back for sure. Maybe she’d use
some kind of financial leverage on the ad company, or maybe she’d go
straight for the throat and send the gloves from Powell’s murder to the
police. Either way the result would be the same—I’d lose everything.
***

Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Drive, San Ysidro Drive—streets

through a town I belonged to at last. The houses and cars I passed on the
way were no longer the impossible possessions of people better than me,
but things that would be mine as a matter of course. I estimated prices, I
planned purchases. I thought realistically for the first time about position,
setting, design, about the convenience of the flats versus the seclusion of
higher up. I considered whether I should go for a Mustang again or whether
I should try a Corvette, or maybe something European. It was a hard
decision to make.
The sky was shaded at the edges by the time I drove through the open
gates of the clinic and into the garage. Bella’s 850ci was already there. She
climbed out of it impatiently like I’d kept her waiting and opened the
passenger door. Lorn sprawled unconscious across the leather upholstery.
The only thing keeping her off the floor was her seat belt. She looked pale
and vulnerable and for a second I wondered if it was really me who was
about to participate in this visceral rape, or whether some other desperate,
driving, fame-obsessed soul had taken possession of me. Then I got her
under the arms and dragged her downstairs. It took a while because she had
a tendency to flop about.
Bright light, sharp instruments on a tray. Lorn lay naked and uncovered on
the table, a needle in the crook of her right arm fed anesthetic into her
system from a drip-bag on a frame. Her face was so white it was hard to tell
where her bleached hair started.
Bella was naked too under her gown. The opening at the back was only
loosely tied and I could see the crack of her ass and sometimes a rear shot
of her cunt as she bent over Lorn making her final preparations. She wore
rubber gloves and a cap, but no mask.
“Things will be different after tonight, Jack.”
“She won’t like you so much, that’s for sure.”
“I never intended it to be long-term.”
“Just as a punishment to me.”
“I wanted to set some boundaries.”
“And now that I know them, what? You want me back?”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
I shuffled about and avoided the question.
“Do you want me to turn her on her side?”
“No, I’m going to enter through the abdomen.”
“Why?”
“Pass me a scalpel.”
Bella was locked in. She didn’t look at me. Her attention was focused
on the smooth white belly in front of her. She ran her hands over Lorn’s
breasts, then on down to the outside of her hips, as though trying to commit
the body on the table to some tactile portion of memory. I gave her the
sharpest looking thing I could find on the tray of instruments, then moved
to stand behind and a little to one side of her.
The scalpel blade caught light from the overhead cluster. I felt myself
holding my breath. Bella leaned forward and kissed Lorn for a long time.
She stroked the side of her face and it looked like she was whispering
something. Then she straightened and stood absolutely still, and for a
moment it was as though everything in the world was copying her. Even the
air in the room seemed to stop moving.
But things didn’t stay that way. Bella reached out with her scalpel. And
even while her hand was traveling through the air it was obvious to me that
something was wrong. She was going for a point immediately below Lorn’s
sternum, a point that looked way too high up the body to be anywhere near
the kidneys. I took a step forward then hesitated. I mean, I wasn’t a doctor
and this could easily have been a bona fide technique. But then Bella made
her incision. She held the scalpel like a pencil and drew it firmly down in a
straight line to the top of Lorn’s pubic hair—it was too much of a cut, and
far too similar to what Karen had ended up with in the park.
 I jerked her away from the table and spun her around. “What the fuck
are you doing?”
Bella’s hand flicked out and the scalpel sliced the air in front of my
face.
“Back off. You had your fun with her, now I’m having mine.”
“You said just her kidney.”
“I changed my mind. Wait upstairs if you don’t want to watch.”
Bella looked disgusted and turned back to the table. Blood ran from
Lorn’s wound, out over both sides of her stomach in bright red sheets. Her
cunt hair was soaked with it and small rills were already spilling from the
table and spattering against the floor. The cut was deep but her abdomen
held together. Bella wasn’t all the way through yet. She got ready for
another stroke. I grabbed for her arm but she was fast and managed to bring
her blade across the back of my hand before I could get a decent grip. It
hurt like fuck and I jumped back, expecting her to try for more damage. But
she didn’t come after me, she just stood there like an animal defending a
carcass, her face stretched and ugly.
“Don’t be stupid, Jack. You’ve got a lot to lose.”
She stared hard at me, then, like she figured the gash on my hand had
sufficiently impressed upon me the idea that I shouldn’t interfere, she
prepared to start work again. But all I was impressed with was the obvious
fact that nothing short of force was going to stop her opening Lorn up all
the way and scooping out her guts.
So, walk away and let her get on with her killing? Or do a little of my
own? It wasn’t a difficult choice to make. Any affection I’d felt for Bella
had been choked out of existence the night Ryan and I killed Powell. And
now, with my new ad contract, there was absolutely no reason to stay linked
to her. On the other hand, I still kind of liked Lorn.
And there were two other reasons that made removing Bella an
attractive proposition. One, it would get rid of that nagging glove problem
—the only physical evidence connecting me to Powell’s murder. And two, I
could fuck her while I was doing it.
This last was the clincher, and before she started cutting again I moved
up close and hit her full force on the side of the head. She went down hard
and slumped around one of the legs of the operating table, unconscious. I
moved quickly about the room, collecting a few things and stripping off my
clothes. I took Bella’s gown off too and tied her hands in front of her with a
roll of bandage. Then I flipped her on to her stomach and waited for her to
come around. She didn’t take much more than a minute, which was good
because I was worried about leaving Lorn too long without attention.
Bella made a few painful sounds before she opened her eyes, after that
her noises got angry and I figured it was time to start. She was still groggy
so it wasn’t much trouble to pull her ass up, get her knees under her, and
slide my cock in from behind. I wrapped a length of yellow-brown surgical
tubing around her neck while she was like that, then just stayed that way,
my cock hard as a pipe inside her, the tubing in place but not tight enough
to do anything. Until she got a little more active and tried to speak. Then I
went to work.
I held the tubing like the reins of a horse and cut off her air. It surprised
me how deep the rubber squeezed into her neck, it looked almost like a
cartoon. She tried to move forward and started shaking her head. Her
movements were jerky. I pulled back harder and pumped my dick into her.
She’d been silent since I tightened up, but now she started to make grunty
choking noises which I figured were some kind of breathing reflex. Her
cunt went a bit loose too, which I hadn’t expected, and she lifted her tied
hands off the floor to claw at her neck. I loosened my grip suddenly so she
overbalanced and fell face-first against the floor. There was blood on the
tiles when I hauled her up again.
I felt the tension in her body, the locked muscles, the bones which
seemed suddenly to protrude where before they had been so smoothly
padded. She tried repeatedly to get her fingers under the tubing and pull it
away from her neck, but her weight made it difficult and she went through
this weird cycle of snatching her hands up to her throat, then jamming them
back down again before gravity could kick in and do its thing with her face
and the floor.
It was hard to keep my eyes open. I wanted to close them and absorb the
raft of sensation pouring from the woman beneath me—the straining of her
back, the taste of sweat between her shoulder blades, the smell of the gas
she farted out as she struggled to free herself. Her cunt vibrated loosely
around my cock, like whatever usually held it tight and in place had let go
and it was now just a drifting, unconnected tunnel of gut. I felt a withdrawal
of the life inside her, as though some emergency survival instinct was
sucking it toward the center of her body, away from the edges, trying to
save it.
She pissed against me. It felt hot and thick and it made my head swim
because it meant I was actually doing it—I actually had my dick inside a
body that was racing toward death.
Sometimes when she moved around I could see her face. It wasn’t a
good color. Her tongue was so swollen it looked like the front half of a
shoe.
She lurched around more and more desperately, kicking her legs out and
trying to get to her feet. After one particularly violent effort she sagged for
a moment and started to pump shit. It blasted out of her ass in a liquid
brown fountain that went on so long I had to pull my cock out and watch.
My stomach dripped with it, it made a pool around our knees.
And because I didn’t have my weight against her anymore she was able
to get her feet under her and jerk upright. The movement took me by
surprise and I lost my hold on the tubing. For a second I thought I was in
trouble, but then she slipped on the shit and fell heavily on her elbow.
Something snapped, but she didn’t scream. She was too busy trying to suck
air past her tongue.
I jumped on her and we rolled around until I trapped her arms between
our two bodies and got her on her back. It was awkward pushing inside her
this way because I was using my hands to strangle her now and I had to
keep tight against her so she couldn’t free her arms. But with one of them
broken and her being pretty badly fucked up already, she couldn’t fight hard
enough to stop me.
Face-to-face made everything so much more immediate. I wanted our
mouths to be together so I could share her last breaths, taste her spit, be as
intimately involved in her experience of dying as possible. Her tongue
made it difficult, though, and she kept moving her head around. The best I
could do was put my forehead against hers and catch what smell of her I
could over the shit.
She made weak humping motions with her hips, trying to throw me off,
but her strength was gone. I fucked her as hard as I could, expecting a
gradual relaxing of her body as the life drained from it. But when it
happened, it happened quickly, like a switch had been thrown, and the
change was exquisite. I felt it around my cock, through my belly and arms,
a profound stillness that was suddenly there, reaching out to me with a
promise of endless tranquillity.
I took my hands off her neck and looked closely at her open eyes, at the
way her tits shuddered with each of my thrusts. And when some of the air
trapped in her lungs worked its way out of her nose and made a hissing
noise like a blow-up toy deflating, I started to spurt. It went on forever, and
after it was over, after I’d pumped myself so dry it felt like I’d never be able
to come again, I lay on top of her, listening to the thudding in my chest and
the silence in hers.
A little later I checked on Lorn. Her breathing was very shallow and the
amount of blood on the floor around the table was frightening. I thought
about unhooking her from the anesthetic, but with a wound like that on her
guts, getting conscious again without major pain relief might have been
even more dangerous than the build-up of sedative in her system. So I left
her as she was, there wasn’t anything else I could do. I left Bella as she was,
too.
On the way back to the Palm Grove I called the paramedics from a pay
phone.

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 Epilogue
So, who says you can’t have everything? The men’s grooming gig went as
planned, a juggernaut of publicity for shaving gel, shampoo, deodorant, and
soap rolling across America with my face on the front. It made me a lot of
money and it made me a celebrity. Not movie-star level, not quite yet, but
I’m starting to get offers.
I bought a bigger house than the one I had on Willow Glen and I got a
faster car than the Mustang. Evenings I go out to places where household
names pass the time between films. On weekends I go to their houses for
dinner. When I have a shoot I travel by limo and if it’s out of town I stay
five-star. I can go to any state in the country and get recognized,
interviewed, and laid. My agent tells me in a couple of years I’ll be the new
Brad Pitt.
The paramedics got to Lorn, but they weren’t quick enough. She was
dead before they could load her into the ambulance—a combination of
blood loss and respiratory failure brought on by the anesthetic. If she’d
made it through, I guess I would have tried to start up a proper relationship,
and I have to say I felt pretty bad about what happened to her for a long
time.
But it all worked out in the end. On a shoot in Marina del Ray I
connected with a Hawaiian Tropic girl. We live together now. She’s the
perfect partner for me—a blond Californian with good tits who shows up on
TV and in magazines. We’re close, we have similar goals and interests, and
if it isn’t exactly love, who gives a shit? We only have to step outside for
that.
The police never decided exactly what happened to Bella. They couldn’t
figure out if the same guy who killed her cut Lorn open as well, or if Bella
did it herself for some reason before she got offed. Even the function and
ownership of the Apricot Lane clinic couldn’t be satisfactorily determined
because the paper trail on it dead-ended with a sugar company in Mauritius
that went out of business six years ago.
 I guess, after all, I got some kind of revenge for Karen. But even back
when she died it wasn’t something that really mattered, and I care even less
now. In fact, I find it pretty difficult to care much about anything that
happened before Bella checked out. There was Rex, I suppose, a guy whose
death I indirectly caused. And Powell, a semi-innocent man I helped
murder. But Rex would have died eventually anyhow, and Powell wasn’t
someone I could dredge up much emotion for.
The only person from that time I even halfway miss is Ryan. I’m not
about to wish he was alive again, but at least he lives in my memory as
someone of significance. He tried to frame me, he beat me up, and he
fucked things between me and Bella, but he also forced me to recognize
things about myself. Some people might say those kind of things shouldn’t
be recognized. I don’t know, maybe they shouldn’t. But I figure if they’re in
there, ignoring them won’t change the person you are. And, shit, I’m a
pretty normal guy, I’m not that different from a lot of people. Maybe only a
few men ever actually get to fuck someone who’s dead, but I bet a whole lot
of others think about it.
And Bella? She’s already started to fade. I guess she did a lot for me
before she turned nasty, and I know I should remember the good times. But
I can’t. All I remember about her is the sight of shit pouring out of her ass,
and the way she went still around my cock.

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 Other selections in Dennis Cooper’s Little House on the Bowery
series

GODLIKE a novel by Richard Hell

141 pages, a trade paperback original, $13.95
Godlike, Hell’s second novel, is a stunning achievement, and quite likely
his most important work in any medium to date. Combining the grit, wit,
and invention of Go Now with the charged lyricism and emotional
implosiveness of his groundbreaking music, Godlike is brilliant in form as
well as dazzling in its heartwrenching tale of one whose values in life are
the values of poetry. Set largely in the early ’70s, but structured as a middle-
aged poet’s 1997 notebooks and drafts for a memoir-novel, the book
recounts the story of a young man’s affair with a remarkable teenage poet.
Godlike is a novel of compelling originality and transcendent beauty.
HEADLESS stories by Benjamin Weissman
157 pages, a trade paperback original, $12.95
“Headless is at play in the world. It is fearless, fun, and sometimes filthy.
Weissman invites you into an alphabet soup of delight in language. Eat up.”
—Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones
“Headless [is] a playful mélange of erotic black comedy and domestic
pathos, dysfunctional families and all-too-functional men, dictators and
lumberjacks. Weissman is an expert juggler of tone …”
—Los Angeles Times
WIDE EYED stories by Trinie dalton
170 pages, a trade paperback original, $13.95
“With linked anecdotes substituting for plot, Dalton’s 20 quick, vibrant,
wild tales read more like fantastical diary entries than short stories … The
latest in Dennis Cooper’s Little House on the Bowery series, the work is
ripe with sensuality and playfulness … Dalton’s unique blend of dream and
bracingly honest observation makes this a delightfully weird and disarming
read.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

ARTIFICIAL LiGHT
a novel by James Greer
336 pages, a trade paperback original, $15.95
“Greer does a superb job of transcending conventional genrefication,
bringing something fresh to contemporary literature … A very enjoyable
read [with a] highly inventive structure, full of eccentricities and rock music
factoids …”
—Library Journal

THE FALL OF HEARTLESS HORSE

by Martha kinney
97 pages, a trade paperback original, $11.95
“Tumultuous and beautiful, an emotional inquiry into writing and the nature
of illusion, so highly pleasurable, a surprise and triumph for the American
novel.”
—Claude Simon, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

These books are available at local bookstores.

They can also be purchased online through www.akashicbooks.com.
To order by mail send a check or money order to:

AKASHIC BOOKS
PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009
www.akashicbooks.com, [email protected]
(Prices include shipping. Outside the U.S., add $8 to each book
ordered.)

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