“You see, that’s how agents are!” another actress cried. “Take your fucking spleen for ten percent. Who needs a spleen? You can live without a spleen!”
“Fucking your own son,” a young actor said, and then he grinned cagily. Would she?
“Focus, you son of a bitch!” the blond kid yelled again.
And somebody said, “Call this little freak’s manager and get him outa here or he’ll be back to being butt-fucked by those bogus producers out front of Schwab’s Drugstore.”
Then the outraged actress said, “This movie, by the way, is supposed to slide by with a soft R rating.”
“Oooooooohhhhhhh!” they cried, sounding like the detective bureau the day Fuzznuts Francis “impacted” for the twelfth time.
“Yeah, then the kid’s daddy, according to this artful script, is supposed to ask the kid on the phone if he’s playing with himself. All that kind of wonderful dialogue.”
“Jesus!” another actress cried. “Are you going to do the film?”
“Are you crazy? I’m not old enough to have a fourteen-year-old son fucking me, you dumb cunt!”
The conversation was now so hot that Al Mackey was startled when Herman III tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Al, I’d like you to meet somebody.”
He turned and was face to face with a twenty-four-year-old girl in the craziest onion-shaped pullover sweater he’d ever seen. It went clear to her thighs and hugged them. In fact it was worn like pants. How did she get in and out? Her matching green hat looked like a graduation cap. She wore tights underneath all of it. Funfinger was absolutely out. It was all or nothing in this costume.
“My name’s Billie,” she said. “Hi, Al. I hear you’re a cop.”
“Hi, Billie.” The enchanted detective leered.
“I love cops. Before I got in The Business I wanted to be a cop,” she said.
“You kids make nice.” Herman III winked as he left them.
“What do you like best about cops?” Al Mackey was weaving like a punch-em doll.
“Gee, you’re really bombed, Al.”
“Not that … that bombed,” he belched.
“Party’s breaking up soon, Al,” she said. “Wanna go for a walk out by the pool?”
“Do I? Do I? Do …”
“Let’s go, Al,” she said. “I used to go with a cop. Before I left Topeka.”
Al Mackey and Billie from Topeka were on their way for the garden stroll when Martin Welborn caught him by the arm and said, “Al, I have to drive a lady home. She lives in West L.A. so I should be back pretty soon. Will you …”
“Yeah yeah yeah. Go ahead, Marty. Have a good one. Catch you later. Take your time. I’ll be around. I’ll …”
* * *
While Al Mackey was chasing after the sunflower in the onion suit, Martin Welborn delighted Deedra Briggs with the ride in the detective car.
“I love all that police talk on the radio,” she said as they drove toward Westwood Village.
“We usually turn it off. Detectives don’t get that many radio calls.”
“Don’t. I love it,” she said, and then she slid over close to him and put her head on his shoulder and said, “Well, Sergeant Elbowpatches, I want you to know I had a very nice evening. And I was dreading this night.”
“Why did you come?”
“My manager insisted. Herman the Third needed some extra jesters, female type.” Then she touched the graying sideburns of the detective and said, “I don’t think I’ll ever do that again.”
“Would you like to have dinner … sometime?” Martin Welborn asked.
“When?”
“Whenever you like. I’m very free and …”
“When?” she challenged. The champagne had made her voice torchy, and sweetened her breath on his face.
“Sunday?” he asked. “Sunday evening?”
“Eight o’clock,” she said. “I’ll make pasta and a salad.”
“I didn’t mean for you to …”
“Drive right over there and park in front of the door,” she said.
It was a high-rise condo, not far from the village. She kissed him on the right cheek twice and when he turned she kissed him on the mouth.
“Sunday. Eight o’clock. Number eight-three-nine. I’ll buzz the door for you.” A flash of thigh, a hiss of satin undergarments as she slid across the seat, and she was gone.
Martin Welborn tried to think about Paula Welborn on the ride back to Holmby Hills. He switched off the radio, but that didn’t help. He couldn’t think about Paula for the first time in months. He didn’t think about Elliott Robles or even Danny Meadows. He simply free-floated and thought of Deedra Briggs.
Meanwhile, Al Mackey was a rapt audience for Billie from Topeka.
“I was in a film with him,” she said. “What a shit, I can tell you.”
“I’ll bet!” Al Mackey said, almost falling off the chaise longue which was perilously close to the lighted Olympic-sized swimming pool.
“He’s always loaded, Al. He’s such a lude freak. You probably think he’s in real good shape from seeing him in movies, right? Well, he also uses Mexican brown. And Persian by the bead! He whiffs it.”
Al Mackey had grabbed half a bottle of bourbon on the way out and was gulping it. Billie didn’t drink, but she had spooned two loads of coke into her raw and dripping little nose while they talked.
“I didn’t know he was a doper,” Al Mackey belched, without the faintest idea who was a doper or what they were talking about. He was too busy trying to figure how anybody could get out of that onion suit once they got into it.
“He can be an on-time guy sometimes. This was a German picture. Lots of tax shelter money there. We always said he was flying over Germany more than the Red Baron. And horny? We always said he’d eat anything before it ate him.”
“Really?” Al Mackey liked that. The conversation was getting off movies and drugs and onto sex where it belonged.
“You married, Al?”
“Not anymore.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get married,” she said. “I live with a guy now. You’re married, everyone starts to get all bothered about everything. Was your wife jealous?”
“The first one was,” he belched. “Caught me with a collapsible container once, and almost killed me over it.”
“What’s a collapsible container?”
“A rubber. That’s what we called them when we worked vice. In any police report when you refer to a collapsible container, it’s a rubber.”
“Really? Did vice cops fuck girls for evidence?”
“Of course not, Billie! We used the collapsible container to put illegal booze in when we were working liquor violators. Better than balloons. Big opening. You can stash them easily in your pocket.” He took another pull of the whiskey, thinking of the bad old days. “That bitch. She finds one in my pocket one night and instead of giving me a chance to explain, she gets my gun. And God or something wakes me up just in time to roll off the bed while she fires one for effect. Right in the pillow where my head was!”
“Gosh, she was jealous. All for finding one little collapsible container! Imagine that!” She took another hit from her tiny gold coke spoon and imagined it.
“Of course we’d been having problems before that.”
“Dipped your dick in a few stray dishes, eh, Al?” Billie said, wiggling her inflamed nostrils, sniffling back the mucus.
Beware the devil’s dandruff, he’d heard an actress warn. Stick some Tampax up your nose, honey, or you’ll leave here a coke freak. “Just a few stray dishes, Billie.” Al Mackey leered. Not any more, God knows!
“Gosh, that musta been the old old days. I never even fucked a guy with a rubber.”
“You haven’t?” Al Mackey felt a magnificent semi beginning to engorge!
“No way. My doctor keeps me on an IUD. I don’t like the pill, cancer and all. You can get an IUD from a goddamn ophthalmologist around here. It’s not like Topeka. All the doctors around
here’re pussy probers, seems to me. You go in with a tennis elbow, they stick their fingers up there looking for your phone number.”
“Uh huh,” the detective sighed. He loved this! Hollywood dirty talk!
Then she said, “Al, when Herman told me you were a cop, I just had to meet you. You’re nice. And you’re not too old, neither.”
“Not at all!” He was swelling like a pigeon. This girl knew how to talk to a man!
“Al, let’s go in that dressing room for a while. I’m feeling, a little … you know?”
It almost ended then and there when Al Mackey jumped up and pitched forward several feet. She saved him from going for a swim, and later he wondered if he was always being spared or tortured by a whimsical God.
The dressing room was almost as large as Al Mackey’s apartment. It had a carpeted floor, a separate bath, and a dressing table. Billie from Topeka showed Al Mackey how she got in and out of the green onion suit. She undressed much quicker than he did.
As Al Mackey heaped blessings on Herman III and struggled out of his suit and shirt and gunbelt and necktie and underwear, and sat on the carpet trying desperately to pull his pants over his shoes, she said, “Wow, Al, it’s stiff as a bat already!”
And it was! “Help me outa these freaking pants, Billie!” Al Mackey cried.
And the girl, flying at the Red Baron’s altitude by now, easily slipped off Al Mackey’s shoes and socks and pants, and finally the bony detective was as naked as she.
“Stiff as a bat! You don’t mess around, Al! Where’s your gun?”
“On the floor!” Al Mackey said, kissing Billie on the neck and shoulders and arm and fingers, getting the preliminaries moving while he worried about the terrible thing that happened at The Red Valentine Massage Parlor.
“Where’s your handcuffs, Al?”
“On the floor!” he cried, running his face down her hip and feeling the fuzz on her delicious young thigh.
“Get your handcuffs, Al,” she said.
That stopped him. “What for?”
“You gotta handcuff me to something.”
Al Mackey raised up, got dizzy, caught himself, but still fell back on his ass. “Why should I handcuff you?”
“Al, for chrissake, ever since Herman told me to … told me that you were a cop, I been looking forward to this. Get the fucking handcuffs, will ya?”
“Okay, okay,” Al Mackey mumbled, feeling around the floor in the dark until he found them. He hoped his keys hadn’t gotten lost. Houdini couldn’t get back into that onion suit while handcuffed.
“Put them on me, quick!” she panted.
“Lemme see,” he said, fumbling with the ratchets.
“Gimme the fucking things!” she commanded, expertly slipping into the cuffs and tightening them down, handling them better than a twenty-year cop.
“Now,” she cried. “Handcuff me to something!”
“Like what?” he said. The room was starting to spin.
“That stool! The little stool!” she cried. “Lift it up and slip the chain around the leg. Make me feel helpless!”
“Yeah, but Billie,” he said, picking up the stool. “This stool only weighs about a pound and a half. You could easily pull away from …”
“Get something for my face! Quick!” She was really whiffing wind now. He’d never heard such panting.
“What can I get you for your face, Billie?” Al Mackey was holding his dizzy head in both hands.
“Anything! A towel! Get a fucking towel!”
“A towel,” he said. “Will my T-shirt do?”
“Yeah, quick! Put it over my face!”
God, he hoped his T-shirt wasn’t too rancid. Then he looked at his erection. He was starting to lose it! “Okay, how do you want me to do it? What am I supposed to do?”
“Over my face. Wrap it around. Fold it under my head. Quick!”
But while he was fumbling, she couldn’t wait, and lifted her chained hands from under the stool and wrapped the T-shirt around her face like a blindfold. Then she lifted the stool and placed her manacled hands back in place.
And during all this, Al Mackey was trying to kiss her flat little belly and get things going again but she kept screaming obscenities. And the obscenities scared him!
“I don’t get it!” he cried, finally. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!”
“Now!” she yelled. “Now! I’m blindfolded! I’m chained to this table! I’m helpless, you filthy gorilla of a rapist! I can’t stop you! I can beg, I can plead. Please don’t rape me, you raping bastard!”
“I won’t!” Al Mackey bleated. He was sitting on the floor holding his forlorn cock in his hand.
“I’m as helpless as a baby!” she screamed. “I’m like a ten-year-old child!”
“Stop it!” Al Mackey cried. “You’re just making it worse!”
Then Billie from Topeka said, “Huh?” and threw Al Mackey’s T-shirt off her face, and saw him sitting there with yet another round that failed to fire.
“Jesus, Al, you’re supposed to ravish me now! What the fuck’s wrong with you!”
“I don’t know!” he cried. “All that talk. The handcuffs, and my T-shirt over your eyes. I don’t know! It just … died!”
Billie from Topeka sat up disgustedly and said, “Just my luck! I was looking forward to this ever since Herman said you were a cop. TAKE THESE THINGS OFF ME!”
They fumbled in the dark for three minutes until he found the handcuff key and unfettered her. She put on her onion suit and graduation cap in record time while the mortified detective struggled into his clothes, all the time enduring righteous and withering insults.
“You know Al, I thought cops were macho and sexy.”
“I’m sorry, Billie.”
“You’re about as sexy as Mother Teresa of Calcutta.”
“I’m sorry, Billie.”
“You’re about as sexy as a bucket of saltpeter, Al.”
“I’m really sorry, Billie.”
But before storming out of the dressing room, Billie from Topeka got hold of herself, and took another little toot of cocaine and remembered that this putz was a pal of Herman III’s. Yet she wasn’t actress enough to keep all the edge out of her voice when she turned those brittle eyes on him and said, “It’s not the end of the world, Al. Maybe some other time. A finished movie’s never as good as the dailies, or as bad as the rough-cut. Remember that.”
“Good-bye, Billie!” he cried.
The cinematic philosophizing didn’t help. It was a disheveled Al Mackey whom Martin Welborn found waiting in front of the Holmby Hills mansion, clutching the red rose that a sympathetic valette had given him.
Al Mackey refused to discuss his evening all the way home. He said a brisk farewell to his partner upon being dropped off at his apartment and was too despondent to kick the cat out of bed. This seemed to confuse and infuriate the animal, who responded by clawing the silk border from the blanket.
On Sunday night, while Martin Welborn was keeping his date with Deedra Briggs, Al Mackey knew he had only one hope for surviving all this, and it was to be found not sitting at the bar of The Glitter Dome but in the pocket of Wing himself. He dressed grimly for a momentous journey to Chinatown while Martin Welborn lay nude beside Deedra Briggs, on floor pillows, looking out at the lights of Westwood Village.
“And you can cook too,” Martin Welborn said, running a finger down her buttercup hip.
She laughed and said, “You’ve got a few talents yourself, Sergeant Elbowpatches.”
“I can’t believe you’re real,” he said. “It’s like a …”
“A dream,” she whispered, kissing him gently.
“No, I was going to say a prayer.”
“That’s an odd way to put it,” she said, kissing him again. “You’re a peculiar policeman, Martin Welborn.”
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve …”
“And you’re a divine gentle lover,” she said, putting her face on his bare chest.
>
“I’m decidedly out of practice. And never had much practice to begin with.”
“Divine gentle lovers like you are born, not made, pardon the pun.”
“Why do you stay in show business?” he asked, “if you hate it so much.”
“Because I never met someone like you.”
“That sounds like a line from a script.”
“It is,” she chuckled. “A bad script. I loved to act at one time. Never mind if I was good or wasn’t. I wanted it more than I can explain. But I’m older now, and a little wiser, I hope.”
“Then get out of it,” he said.
“Will you come and be my love and let me make pasta for you?”
“I could be persuaded,” Martin Welborn said.
“So could I, Sergeant Elbowpatches,” she said. “So could I.”
And while Martin Welborn was busy talking to Deedra Briggs about her going over a bigger wall than he vaulted when he left the seminary, Al Mackey was stalking somberly into The Glitter Dome on a quiet Sunday night.
Wing was extremely depressed. He hadn’t had a single customer all evening who wasn’t sober. He hadn’t stolen a dime. He hopped around gleefully when he spotted Al Mackey. All was not lost!
“A free one to start the evening!” Wing cried, pouring Al Mackey a one-ounce shot of Tullamore Dew. No sense being too grateful.
“I gotta talk to you privately, Wing,” the detective said.
“Look around,” Wing said, pointing to a couple at the far end of the long bar. “This is about as private as it can get.”
Al Mackey tossed back the Tullamore Dew, smacked the glass on the bar, and said, “Make the next one a double.” Then the detective opened his wallet and placed a twenty on the bar in front of him.
Wing chuckled as he glided over to the cash register to break down the twenty. His antenna hairs came unglued when he bounded back with the pile of money. He always broke bills into lots of ones and lots of silver to facilitate his moves. Al Mackey didn’t care. In fact, to keep Wing’s little eyes all agleam, he opened his wallet and laid two more tens on top of the pile.
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