“Now, how in the hell can I remember to do that every night? That’d drive a guy crazy, just thinking about the pressure and consequence if it fails.”
“I know of no other way, Cable. Please, much is at stake here. Will you cooperate?”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll do everything I can. I suppose if I write a note to myself on my pillow or something, I’ll do your little golden gate thing.”
“Thanks, Cable. I like you. And I want us to like one another. My responsibility to the great Red Dragon Lady is for life. If I fail her, all else in her domain fails.”
“Where is she now?” I asked, trying to keep track of all the nutso things that were occurring in my life lately.
“As far as I know, sulking back at the Cave of the Seven Truths. She’s reviewing the content of those Great Truths, so she may be somewhat fortified when the temptation hits her that she wants to be with you at all costs. I do think Goddesses have a female quality that is difficult for me to comprehend. They can be a bit erratic in their thinking process.”
“Hmmm…well, I’ll keep my eyes peeled and my ears open. And if she comes thumping at my dream state door, I’ll send her packing—politely, of course.”
“Thanks, Cable. I must be off. Let’s be vigilant. Also, I’ll help keep an eye on the Oculus Order and try to warn you when the unfortunate discovery is made.”
I shook Toggth’s little hand and we parted. The afternoon had worn on and the Santa Ana winds had increased in velocity. I walked down to the streetcar line and took the Hollywood Boulevard car over to Cahuenga and walked up to Franklin. As I went up the stairs to my office, I gotta funny feeling in my gut. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something was up. I unlocked the door to my office. I had drawn the dirty yellow venetian blinds so the room had an eerie yellow, subdued hue to it. I needed a drink. I went to my desk and opened the upper right hand drawer and took out my cheap rotgut gin. I bought it off of some bathtub bootlegger named Zoot Carradine. He also made a horrible rum and an even worse vodka from rotten potatoes he dug up somewhere by the hundred pound sack. I poured the gin into the old well-used glass I kept on the desk and lit up a Lucky Strike from my favorite green pack with the red logo. I sat back, thinking what a life I was living! For a fleeting moment, I was even thankful for all the good things that had come my way. But the other part that niggled at me came from some of the words my mysterious and threatening morning caller had used. Where you go, death and evil follow, he had said. In a way he was right. It did seem that so much of my life led me into dangerous situations that often resulted in dark and terrible discoveries—not to mention people getting killed. I mean, what were the odds of someone like Mario getting killed if it weren’t for my supporting him in his cause—or Rusty Wilson dying a terrible death by turning into some horrible viper-like thing and getting shot dead in Mexico? Yeah, sure, I meant well—but it didn’t turn out that way. Why was I always putting myself and others in danger’s path? Could I actually have, unknowingly, been the cause of all these things?
Just then the phone rang. “Yeah, Cable Denning here,” I said, still distracted in my head.
There was a slight pause. “Is this the famous private detective?” a warm, medium-high female voice spoke.
“I don’t know about famous, lady, but you got the private detective part right. What can I do for you?”
“I think I need your….services…but I cannot come to you.” There seemed to be a very slight accent to the voice, not unlike one I’d heard before. But where or when, I couldn’t recall. “Would you be able to meet me at my lodgings around ten o’clock tonight?”
“Isn’t that a bit late for a meeting with someone you don’t know, especially a private dick?”
“A private what?”
“That’s slang for private detective.”
“Oh. I wasn’t sure what you meant.” I could tell she was fishing. “Well, if you think that too late an hour, how about nine o’clock?”
“I get twenty-bucks a day plus expenses. In your case, being a house call, it doesn’t matter whether or not you become my client, I’ll still have to charge you.”
“That’s fine. Can you come? I’m—I’m in a rather awkward and desperate situation. Please consider that, Mr. Denning.”
“How did you hear about me?”
“Well, you seem to be quite popular with some people. I have heard through other sources…some…some of your rather unusual cases under extraordinary circumstances.”
“Uh-huh…give me your name and address—you don’t live too far away, do you? Streetcar service goes off in some areas by midnight.”
“I’m in a brand new building at Wilshire near La Brea. 5225 Wilshire Blvd., apartment #1206.”
I knew the building. It was a pretty fancy complex and the twelfth floor probably meant some expensive real estate. “And your name, please?”
The dame was beginning to intrigue me. I always loved that first rush of a
new adventure. “Ona…Ona Stephens…” she answered.
“Alright, Mrs. Stephens, I’ll—”
“—Miss if you don’t mind—I’m unmarried.”
“Boyfriend, bodyguard, houseguest? Anyone else I should look out for as I approach your apartment? Dog?”
“No. Just me…I’m alone.”
“Then how do you know you can trust me—or, for that matter, what I look like?”
“Believe me, Mr. Denning, I trust you.” Then she queried me in a rather playful tone of voice. “So, tell me, what do you look like?”
“Well, I’m about five-ten, kind of rough with dark eyes and a cleft chin. I usually wear a trench coat and a dark brown fedora.”
“Do you have a kind face?”
“What’s that have to do with whether or not I make a good private investigator, Miss Stephens?”
“Nothing, I guess. May I expect you then at 9:00 p.m.?
“Yeah, lady, I’ll be there.”
“Thank you.” She hung up and I scratched my head. I wondered if that phone call was the reason I had that funny feeling when I climbed the stairs to my office earlier. Or maybe some dames were just bashful, maybe she was ugly and didn’t want to be seen in public. Maybe someone was after her and she feared for her life. I had a feeling I’d find out in a few hours. I went into the back where my small but adequate living quarters were, stripped, showered and shaved. At least I’d try to keep a decent image of Cable Denning, Presentable Private Detective up and running.
The Goddess and the Gumshoe
About 9:00 p.m. I was pressing the indicated buzzer at 5225 Wilshire. Almost immediately the response tone buzzed me in. I took the elevator to the twelfth floor and got out. I had packed my iron just in case. One of the unspoken rules in the private dick’s manual was never to go out without your .38—I had learned that just being an off duty cop….you never know what you might come up against out there.
I knocked on the door of apartment #1206. When the door opened I was slapped with a heavy dose of déjà vu. There in the same white, see-through negligée with a glass of champagne in hand and those same pink nipples staring me in the face, was the very woman in that great vision Toggth had conjured up earlier…just before he appeared out of the vapors and shook me out of my marvelous patio reverie. “Mr. Denning. Please come in.”
I entered with this funny feeling I knew the doll. She escorted me to a sofa and asked if I wished a glass of champagne. I couldn’t refuse a bit of the bubbly, especially in these Prohibition days when most of it tasted like carbonated straw. I had a feeling Miss Stephens’ alcohol would be first class. And it was. “Good to meet you, Miss Stephens.” I toasted my glass in her direction and she toasted back, but I noticed she did not drink. “Well, here’s to you, lady, and may all your troubles be small ones.” Her eyes were locked onto mine and I was feeling a bit uncomfortable. I took a big sip and put it down on the glass coffee table. “You know, there’s something I have to tell you. Are
you an open minded person? I mean, if I told you about something out of the ordinary that happened, are you—would you be, uh, receptive to it?”
“Oh, you might say that, Mr. Denning. Please…go ahead…”
“Well, I took a walk in Bronson Park earlier this afternoon. I sat on an old log and, uh, suddenly my mind was transported to a penthouse, and I found myself looking down at the traffic far below—I mean, it was much higher than your building here. I turned around to light a cigarette and you….you were standing at the threshold to your patio door, dressed exactly as you are now, only it was around midnight. You called me over and spoke to me and said—”
“—I’ve waited for you so long to come and dry my tears…” And my jaw dropped as I just sat there looking at this babe.
“You—you are you, whoever you are! How in the hell—”
“—come…” She urged me off the sofa and took my hand. The minute our flesh connected I could feel a familiar rush go up my arm. What the hell was going on? She led me to a door that exited out into a spacious patio. Again, I could’ve dropped my teeth, for the flower boxes and tubs of shrubbery were exactly as I had seen them earlier in the day! “Now…do you remember this? Only it was midnight and I told you if you whispered to me the promise of love I see in your eyes…that I would take you to my warm, waiting bed.” She gazed at me with such abandon, I thought she’d pull me into those eyes and I would disappear.
“Hey, toots, I don’t know who you are or what magic spell you’re casting here, but you’d better come clean, because I’m getting a nasty headache trying to figure this one out!” I turned and went back inside and she followed. I sat down on the sofa and she sat next to me. Then Miss Stephens’ voice disappeared and a more familiar one emerged from this beautiful lady. “Cable…it’s me…I had no other way to get you here—I had to do it secretly—Toggth would get so angry with me if he knew—”
“—Lei-tao! What the—how?—how come you don’t look like you—I mean, you’re in the shape of some stylish white woman?"
“I was eavesdropping when Toggth visited you this afternoon. I tuned into the erotic vision he created for you. He did it to derive his own pleasure from the experience. So I just duplicated it.”
“But why? We both already know the score, Lei-tao. You’re not supposed to engage in intimate earthly activities that involve—”
“—loving you? Why not? Why not, Cable!! I’ve lived a life of discipline for a time beyond your imagining, without even once experiencing what it’s like to be a female who enjoys pleasure in the carnal, sensual worlds—with a man like you who will take me—and—and open me up with passion and force. Why can’t I have that? Even if just once?”
“Because if Toggth is right, it’ll crumble your whole dimension—according to him, that vibrational jurisdiction, as he tells it. And then you have to go back into the lotus pod for another fourteen thousand years until you are called again. That’s your role, that’s your fate, your destiny, Lei-tao. We’ve all got fates, destinies—name me one person whose life is their own—one they can do with as they please or have control over?”
She lowered her voice. “It won’t happen that way. I’ve perfected a way to transmigrate my cells and genetic coding to match a human female’s. Cable, I’ve never felt like this. Your smile lives with me—and it’s not like me at all! Remember, I’m the Red Dragon Lady, always in control. But I can’t work this out alone—no matter who I am or where I am or what I do, I see your face, I hear your voice. Can’t you see, I can have you safely now. I can love you completely…please hear me, Cable—please hear me—I’m in love with you! It’s not ever going to change, Cable, not for me!”
That stopped me in my tracks. I withdrew and became silent. She bent over, got the champagne bottle off the coffee table and refilled my drink. “You’re not drinking?”
“You know it is dangerous to me, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot.” I was defeated before I had begun to fight this ravishingly beautiful woman with the wisdoms and wits of a goddess. “So what do you want me to do, Lei-tao? I gave my word to Toggth—he’s your overseer—I always try to be a man of my word. Put yourself in my shoes—what would you do?”
“Toggth’s wrong, Cable. He doesn’t know I’ve mastered the transfiguration process. And I can reverse it.” She looked down to the floor. “Then I can go back, return to my little lotus pod for another umpteen thousand years. That’s the price I pay.” She got up and took my hand, pulled me up from the sofa and led me to her bedroom. “This…is that warm bed, Cable…the one I invited you to in your daydream.”
“I don’t know if I can do this, Lei-tao. It’s true, originally I was the one at fault. I initiated all the kissing stuff, partly because it’s my male animal habit—and partly because after our tantric experience in the Cave of the Seven Truths, I was hot as a pistol for you. I wanted to experience what I knew I could experience with no other woman—or goddess—ever…”
“That part, my desire for you is irreversible, Cable. No one, nothing can stop my wanting you.” She came up to me and clamped those luscious lips of hers onto mine. “If I don’t have you I’ll perish anyway—so what’s the difference? One less goddess in the dimensional atmospheres?”
At least in that statement she made sense…I guessed. “Oh, Lei-tao. And if you’re wrong? I’d never be able to forgive myself, babe. Because I know I started this whole damn thing—”
She put her finger to my lips, sat me on the bed and turned off the lights. Only one red candle burned from her dresser. Then she slipped off that very translucent gown of hers and the Red Dragon Lady’s perfect body shone in the semi-darkness, shape-shifting before my eyes from Ona Stephens to Lei-tao. She got on her knees by the bed where I sat and took the champagne glass out of my hand. “We don’t need alcohol to make us perfect together.” Her eyes misted in the faint red glow of the candlelight. “I love you, Cable…and if that is my sin, so be it…”
I pulled her up to me and pressed her lips onto mine. She began unbuttoning my shirt and soon we stood face-to-face, naked together. In the glow of the red candle the transfiguration of Lei-tao began, the process from goddess to human woman, filled with passion and desire, trespassing all protocol demanded of her world, only to have to return into the humble pod of a lotus seed on some distant tomorrow.
“Oh, Cable…please…do whatever you do to any other mortal woman—do that to me…force me, ravish me, touch and kiss every part of my body, inside and out. Force my breasts into your mouth and kiss me until my lips bleed!” She sat upon my chest, rolling in a seductive rhythm, allowing me to feel her thick, wet womanhood slide up and down upon my own body. Soon she had rolled over and opened her arms to me. I came into them and we bonded in such a powerful way that my whole spirit was elevated as my heart beat furiously with desire for this exquisite and rare beauty. We lost all sense of time, in the descent, deeper and deeper into layers of ecstasy and fulfillment. Our bodies were wet with perspiration and yet the frenzy continued until every ounce of available energy was spent from our bodies.
Finally we lay quiet for the longest time. Then with such a secret joy in her voice, Lei-tao whispered into my ear. “Mr. Denning…you have just made me the happiest of creatures—anywhere. And…you impregnated me with the perfect daughter who will become the first immortal woman in constant human form.”
I was trying to come out of the erotic trance we had been in. I heard her words, but I’m not sure they registered correctly. I sat up. “You what? Mind repeating that, doll?”
She arose and put her arms around me. “I just conceived our child. You have honored me, Cable, with a companion daughter for all time. Never again shall I be lonely in the carrying out of my tasks as protector of the Cave of the Seven Truths and my jurisdictional dimension. I will have a rightful heir now.”
I was angry and sympathetic at the same time. Suddenly I got it that all these many centuries, Lei-tao had been lonely, circulat
ing there among the stars, trapped in a seedpod at the bottom of a Chinese lake. She had been seeking companionship, but now she would have her own replicated child, a daughter, to feel the magic that only motherhood can bestow upon the female psyche. “You…you didn’t tell me that part of it, kid. Shouldn’t you have consulted me? So now I’m going to be a cosmic father—or what? You sure are a barrel of surprises. Oh, by the way, you were wonderful—I mean, as a lover—and I’d always want you to know, no matter what, I really did desire you, lady, big time. I’ll take that part of the responsibility.”
“I am sorry I didn’t tell you. But I was blinded by the longing, the desire for you that tore me to pieces and I was afraid if I told you I was receptive and could conceive tonight, you would run away.”
“Well, yeah, that’s a distinct possibility…”
“But no matter how it ends, I will love you for always, please believe me. Are you angry with me?”
“I don’t know what I am anymore, Lei-tao. Should I be? Do immortal Red Dragon Ladies do things like you just did as a matter of course—or am I the privileged exception?"
“No, Cable. Only a foolish Red Dragon Lady in love would do what I’ve done…obsessed with desire for the object of her affections.”
“How—how do you know you’ll have a daughter and not a son?”
“You helped determine that for me, my lover. Your seed honored the divine feminine tonight.”
“Well, don’t ask me to understand that.”
“I won’t.” She tittered lightly, threw her arms around me and rocked us slowly on the bed. “I will come visit you as my tummy grows…so you can feel our child stirring inside. Won’t that be so—so…” She broke down and began crying. “Oh, Cable—I can’t live with you—I can never live with you or be your wife or mistress or even your lover, ever again.”
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