by Jack Bunker
I brew myself a fresh pot and take a mugful into the living room to settle down on the couch with a photocopy of one of Lana Strain’s journals. She wrote hundreds of pages that I’m trying to wade through, ever on the lookout for motives.
You’d think a successful lyricist and larger-than-life rock star would fill her diaries with lush descriptions, intimate musings, and lurid details, but Lana was disappointingly sketchy.
Had lunch with Bosco today. Ordered the Caesar. She said I shouldn’t because of the garlic. I told her Bozo wouldn’t care, he smells like an ashtray anyway. She said she wouldn’t mind getting into his pants. I told her to feel free, but I know she won’t because he put the make on her last year, and she had to smack him with a tambourine to get him off her. She just said it to make me jealous because Gomer wants to fuck me. Like I’d give his skinny ass the time of day.
And so on. The nicknames are annoying. I’ve figured out that Bozo is Billy, and I’ve got a few theories about one or two others, but that’s all so far.
After an hour in Lanaworld I hear a key in the door, and Melody walks in carrying a brown bag filled, I’m sure, with unspeakable things made of tofu called faux something or other. I’m wrong. She reaches into the bag and pulls out a silicone vagina.
“That supposed to be lunch?”
“It’s your friend Vajayna,” she says, “from Fun with Dick and Jane. It’s an exact replica. Someone actually made molds of the folds. I bought three of them. From three different sex shops.” She reached back into the bag and pulled out some sales slips. “Here’s your receipts.”
“You expect me to pay for those?”
“There’s nothing like a chick buying fake pussy to get a porn dealer talking. You want to bitch about the cost, or you want to hear what I found out?”
My reply is to take the receipts out of her hand.
“Shockingly,” says Mel, “Jane is her real name. Last name Porter. Grew up in Bakersfield, did a little modeling then came to the big city to break into acting.”
“These sex-toy salesmen knew all this?”
“Everybody knows everybody in that business. It’s like one big happy family.”
Melody lifts her leg straight up and touches her ankle to her ear. She’s wearing a short plaid skirt that falls immodestly onto her shoulder revealing her black leotard crotch, but it doesn’t faze her. She stretches like that for a few seconds, then rests the heel of her Capezio jazz shoe on my brick mantel. She holds that pose as she talks.
“When Hollywood didn’t come knocking,” she continues, “your girlfriend connected with a guy who directs porn flicks, and before long she’d parlayed a negligible gag reflex into stardom and her own production company. The boyfriend didn’t last, but the production company took off, mostly due to the success of one of her many porn sites.”
“Ginger’s?”
“Bingo. There are hundreds of thousands of porn sites out there, most of them indistinguishable from each other. But what Ginger does is unique. She’s got that necro-rock-star-fetish thing going, and it’s been making a lot of money for Jane Porter.”
Out of curiosity, I hit the keyboard and Google around for tidbits about Jane. Ten minutes later I hit on a five-year-old article from the LA Business Journal that someone scanned and uploaded to a porn chat room. The headline reads, “Porn Meets Rock and Earnings Roll.”
I read it and whistle.
“What?” says Mel, switching legs.
“In 2010, the profits from LanaLives.com surpassed Danni Ashe’s best year.”
“Who?”
“You never heard of Danni.com?”
Mel looks at me like I’m speaking Icelandic.
“I interviewed her once for a Penthouse piece. She was the only woman to ever appear on the covers of both Juggs magazine and the Wall Street Journal. She practically invented Internet porn.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
“At its height, Danni.com was estimated to be worth thirty million dollars.”
Now it’s Mel’s turn to whistle.
THIRTEEN
I spend the next morning on my deck overlooking the inversion layer that holds the smog down on the Valley floor. The few wisps of clouds offer scant cover from the merciless sun. The only thing more aggravating than the weather is Vern Senzimmer’s book, which I’ve managed to almost finish.
From beginning to end, it’s a gaping yawn. He spends two hundred pages describing egocentric tales about his struggles with addiction to weed, speed, coke, crack, heroin, tequila, Lana Strain, and tater tots.
“I got tired of her whining,” he writes, “and told her I didn’t want to see to her anymore, didn’t even want to talk to her, but she wouldn’t listen. She called ten times a day, day after day, begging me to take her back.”
It makes me want to throw up. You’d think he was Hugh Jackman spurning a stalker, even though multiple sources, including Lana’s journal, confirm that Lana was the one who did the dumping. So am I reading the denial of a drug-addled mind? Or the regurgitation of bitterly sour grapes?
I have trouble keeping my mind from wandering to Holly. I wonder if she’ll actually kick me out of my house. I’m sure that’s exactly what Jerry’s campaigning hard for her to do. Does she hate me enough to go through with it? Do you have to love someone to generate that much hate?
I identify with Senzimmer. We were both dumped. And I suspect we were both floundering in love, though he doesn’t seem willing to admit it. According to Lana’s journal, she just got bored with him. I’m still not sure what Holly’s excuse was. It’s not like I cheated on her or hit her or stopped loving her. She said it was about my ethical deficiencies, but I always felt that was an intellectual smokescreen for some other failing on my part. I wonder what it would take to make me despise Holly as much as Senzimmer seems to despise Lana. Would losing my home be enough?
Why can’t all relationships be as simple as the one I have with Gloria? No demands, no expectations, just a loving friendship. If I’m in a jam, I know she’s always there for me and vice versa. Love without strings. It’s a beautiful thing. In terms of sex, we keep it flexible. Gloria thinks monogamy is absurd and contrary to human nature. I disagree. So if I’m not dating anyone, our relationship includes sex. If I am, it doesn’t. When I was married to Holly, for example, Gloria and I stayed tight, but sex was off the table. After my marriage fell apart, on those rare occasions when I dated a woman more than once, Gloria respected my feelings and laid off until my fling was over. And flings are all I’ve had since Holly. I don’t envy the women who date me. Between Holly and Gloria, the bar is set pretty high.
Somewhere in my reflections on relationships I’ve fallen asleep. I wake up a half hour later to find the pages of Senzimmer’s book soaked in drool. How appropriate. I retreat to my air conditioning, pour the dregs of this morning’s coffee in a glass and throw in a half dozen cubes of frozen coffee. While I give it a minute to chill, I call Angel.
“Well if it isn’t Nob Brown! I’m sure you’re bearing good news or money, because even you couldn’t have the balls to call for yet another favor.”
“It’ll just take a minute. Relax.”
His trademark sigh precedes his words of resignation. “Lay it on me.”
“If they file whatever it is Jerry wants to file today, are they going to get my house?”
I hear him chuckle. I must have I missed the joke.
“They can try,” he says. “Have the sheriff seize your tax returns, garnishee your bank account, cause you grief, and give you a hard time. How much do you owe again?”
“Two Gs,” I say, thinking he probably spends two grand on hairstyling every month, and I can’t even scrape that much together to save the roof over my head.
“Well, you’d think a judge would be hard-pressed to kick a man out of his castle for two thousand dollars. On the other hand, you could draw some judge who just caught her hubby in the sack with the babysitter, and she might use you as her w
hipping boy.”
“I thought justice was blind,” I say.
“Only the statue,” says Angel.
I take a sip of iced coffee. It tastes great.
“So what do I do?”
“Any chance of getting the money together?”
“I’m waiting on a few writer’s fees,” I say. “But they’re mostly for a few hundred bucks apiece, except for one from Hustler. But it could be another two, three months before I see it, and I need something to live on.”
“Ever hear the phrase ‘saving for a rainy day’?”
“Sure. It means scrimp to save a nest egg so you have cash to pay the lawyers when you get divorced.”
“Point taken,” he says. “Look. Just try to stall them. Tell them your tax records are disorganized, and it’ll take some time to pull them together.”
“And that’ll work?”
He draws air audibly through his teeth to express his doubts. “It’s free advice, Nob. You get what you pay for.”
We wrap up the conversation. I hang up and set the timer on the stove so I don’t lose track, then I go back to my journal readings.
At two o’clock I jump in the shower.
I check the mail before I leave. No money and nothing from Jerry. I guess that’s a good omen, since he hasn’t called and there’s been no sign of a process server. I wonder whether Angel’s threat worked, or Holly just postponed, or the papers are at the court but I don’t know it yet. Knowing Jerry, it’s the latter.
Solley’s Deli is about five minutes from my house, but I rarely eat there, not because they’re in a rundown shopping strip on Van Nuys Boulevard, but because they think they’re on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Eight bucks for a loaf of rye bread?
Three o’clock is a little early for dinner, even for the blue-plate-special crowd, so the place is practically empty. There are a few elderly couples scattered randomly in a sea of booths and a big guy in a Gators cap sitting across two stools at the counter, snapping his head back and forth like he’s in the front row at Wimbledon, looking for a waitress. No sign of Ginger.
I grab a menu and take a booth by the window to watch for her.
A waitress asks me what I want, calls me Hun. I consider making an Attila joke then decide it’s not funny. I order a coffee and tell her I’m waiting for someone. She tells me they’re out of the kishka and the short-rib flanken. I tell her there’s a guy at the counter wants to talk to her. She walks off, not toward the counter.
I take advantage of the wait by calling three-one-one. A city operator puts me through to Sanitation to order my large-object pickup, but the line is busy. I hang up and look back at the parking lot. No Ginger.
My coffee comes fast, but I’m into my fourth cup by three thirty and I’ve polished off the complimentary pickles and still no Ginger. I’m beginning to worry. The waitress is giving me sideways glances, making me feel conspicuous, so I order a five-dollar smear of lox spread to give her something else to think about. I try calling Ginger’s cell for the third time, and I get her voice mail again. I remember the desperation in her voice when she left me the message about meeting, sounded like she’d been crying. My worry grows. When the waitress comes back with my food, I tell her to pack it to go. Something smells fishy and it’s not the lox.
I walk down the street to Fun with Dick and Jane, hoping to find her there. Same graffiti in the elevator. When I step out, I see the door to the suite. It’s ajar. Music from the Psycho shower scene starts up in my head, violins screeching to a driving beat. I pull my shirttail out of my pants and use it to avoid leaving prints as I push open the door. It swings wide to reveal nothing. Literally.
The place is stripped clean. No art, no Naugahyde sectional, no whiteboard, no framed DVD box covers, no desk, no coffee table, no magazines, no giant potted fern, no Jane, no Robert, no SpongeBobs. I walk through into Jane’s office. Not even a dust ball in the corner. My worry turns to dread.
I decide to try some of the other tenants, see if there’s any juicy gossip running around. My first stop is the Ocularists’ Guild next door.
The door is unlocked, so I walk in. It’s not a suite like Dick and Jane’s, just a ten-by-fifteen box with a window overlooking the alley. A Rubenesque woman on the far side of her fifties looks up at me through turquoise butterfly-shaped glasses whose lenses make her eyes look like ET’s.
“I know,” she says. “I have two eyes.”
Her glare is intensified by her thick lenses. She has painted-on eyebrows that match the copper of her hair and follow the undulating curve of her glasses. Her pink-glossed lips are framed by frown lines that make her pout look like a permanent fixture.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Sure you were. Everybody does. They assume you work at the Ocularists’ Guild because you have a glass eye. Like it was a condition of employment or something.”
“Actually, I was going to tell you how impressed I am by your correct usage of the apostrophe in Ocularists’.”
This cracks her frown. She almost smiles and then blushes and pretends to brush a piece of lint off her shoulder to avert her eyes.
“What can I do for you?” she asks.
“I was wondering if the suite next door might be available for lease. It seems to be empty.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“I’m surprised to see the place empty,” I say. “You’d think management would put a ‘for lease’ sign up before a tenant was moves out.”
“They made smut, you know. Of the filthiest kind. Management was not the primary skill for which people in their business are known.” The copper eyebrows rise for effect.
I life my eyebrows, too, to encourage her to keep talking.
“You don’t need to be Columbo to see the stupidity of hiring a pornmonger to manage a building,” she says, “but the landlord doesn’t seem to care. You can’t imagine the sorts of perverts they brought flouncing through the building. I’m sure you saw the graffiti around. But ‘management’ seems to be gone now, so good riddance.”
“So if I’m interested in leasing, I should talk to the owner,” I say.
“What sort of business are you in?”
“Manufacturing,” I say. “Silicone toys.”
Before she thinks too long about this, I ask her for the owner’s name and number.
Her face resumes the pout as she pulls the contact up on her computer and copies it onto the back of one of the Guild’s business cards.
“Thank you so much,” I say. “Perhaps we’ll be neighbors.”
She replies with a humph. Her phone rings and, when she picks it up, I walk out.
I drive up to the Van Nuys Civic Center, just a half mile north. As a cop, I often had to testify at the Van Nuys courthouse, and I remember that the parking attendant in the Braude Building went off duty at four o’clock. It’s well past that now, so I park underneath and take my chances that some overzealous DOT engineer doesn’t have me towed.
I walk across the street to the county recorder’s office. In the mornings, the lines snake out the door, but at the end of the day, I just stroll right in and find only one person in line ahead of me. It’s irritating to have to wait at all, but it’s easier to go in person than it is to find ownership records on the Internet. State law prohibits the posting of home addresses online and, to avoid potential errors, the county recorder doesn’t post commercial addresses either. With so many stars in residence, LA is full of stalkers. Why simplify their job?
I finally get up to the window and find out that Dick and Jane’s building is owned by a company called Kocibey Development.
I call Mel on my way back to the garage and ask her to see what she can dig up on Kocibey.
I get home twenty minutes later to find her doing downward facing dog.
“Any luck?” I ask.
She replies without breaking form.
“Kocibey’s at the end of a long and winding paper trail that leads nowhere. Just a string of mysteriou
s shell corporations. I looked into individuals named Kocibey and found a few on Facebook, LinkedIn, phone books, and such, but didn’t find any that had apparent ties to construction or real estate or even finance. I did, however, discover an Ottoman vassal named Kocibey who founded a city by the same name in 1240 AD”
“I think the thirteenth century is a little far afield.”
“How about the eighteenth century? That’s when the Russians renamed it Odessa.”
The light bulb flashes above my head. “Fuck me.”
“What?”
“Bakatin’s place,” I say. “It’s called the Odessa Social Club. He must either own or have a piece of Fun with Dick and Jane. That explains why he’d use them to manage his building.”
“You’re saying Vlad’s in the porn business?”
“Wouldn’t you expect him to be? He is, after all, The Impaler.”
FOURTEEN
I try Ginger’s cell again. Still no answer. She sounded desperate the last time she called, and now she’s been MIA for three hours. I decide to head up to her house. If it wasn’t for my fear, the drive into Laurel Canyon would be a breeze. Opposing traffic, on the other hand, is frozen in time. I have to wait two minutes to make the left turn across it onto her street. The two minutes are interminable.
I wind up Weeping Glen to find colored lights in front of the dome house. Cop lights. Spinning, flashing, glaring, bad-news cop lights. There must be a half dozen black-and-whites up and down the narrow street, blocking it off. There’s a forensics van, too. But what really gets my attention is the county meat wagon.
I park and walk up the hill, feeling slightly nauseated. There’s yellow crime tape around the house and a couple of rookies standing guard. I ask one of them what happened, and he tells me to please stand back from the tape, sir. I’m about to tell him to eat shit when I see Detective Rafer Dumphy walk out the downstairs door in a polyester satire of a suit. Maybe that’s why his friends call him Dumpy. It’s been a while since he’s seen the inside of a gym, and he carries his extra poundage on a frame that would be about my height if his posture weren’t so pathetic. Hard living is writ large across his face in rheumy eyes and a swollen, reddened nose. He sees me and smiles. It is not a friendly smile.