by M. Z. Kelly
“What...who’s Bubba?”
When Mack and the puppies came over, I introduced them to Jack. The two men shook hands and did that strut and stare thing that guys do when they’re sizing one another up.
Bernie and I took a moment with Betty and Bubba. When we were finished, I tugged on Bernie’s leash, turned to the two men, and said the only thing I could think of considering the situation.
“I’ve got to run, gentlemen. I have to meet my mother for the first time in thirty-one years.”
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More by this author:
The Hollywood Alphabet Thriller Series, with Detective Kate Sexton:
•Hollywood Assassin
•Hollywood Blood
•Hollywood Dirty [Coming Soon]
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NOW AN EXCERPT FROM…
HOLLYWOOD DIRTY
By
M Z Kelly
CHAPTER ONE
“I’m queen of the world,” Nana Hannah screamed into the wind.
Nana was eighty-three years young and nude from the waist up. She stood in the front passenger seat of my roommate Mo’s red 1973 convertible Caddie, arms splayed surfing the wind, as we barreled down the freeway. The woman who bared her withered assets to the world was ninety pounds of bone, white-blue hair, and breasts that had sunk below sea level probably not long after the Titanic found an iceberg.
“Pull her down into the seat,” Mo yelled over her shoulder at us, her red hair swirling in the wind as she steered her big boat of a car down the highway. “If that ain’t indecent exposure, I don’t know what the hell is.”
My British friend Natalie Bump, who was sitting next to me in the backseat, reached forward and grabbed Nana by her collar bone. “She’s bloody daft. Now I know where they got the name boob.” Natalie jerked her down into the seat like a crazed granny version of a jack-in-the-box.
My friend is a native of Manchester, England. She’s tall and blonde, and, as one of the detectives I work with once said, is so hot that she makes a Victoria’s Secret model look like the before picture in a plastic surgery ad. Natalie had a rough upbringing with a truck diving father and inherited his colorful vocabulary, defying the typical British reserve.
I looked down at my dog Bernie who was in the backseat between Natalie and me. Nana’s blouse had landed on his head when she tossed it off and he was trying to shake it off. I removed the top and handed it to Nana. “Cover up before we all get arrested.”
“We’re going to Vegas,” Nana said, turning to me and clicking her ill-fitting dentures together. “Don’t you know what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?”
“We ain’t even crossed the state line yet,” Mo said, motioning to the city we were passing through. “And I gotta feeling the citizens of Barstow are never gonna recover from the trauma they just seen.”
My roommate, Mo Simpson, is a former pimp. Mo’s black and big and loud, as in someone who changes her hair color weekly and wears tight-fitting dresses that show the world the eye-popping effects of spandex on enormous breasts.
My large friend is also prone to physical violence when the circumstances warrant and sometimes even when they don’t. She and Natalie recently started a private detective business called, Sistah Snoop. They’re like a couple of meddling camels, routinely sticking their noses under other people’s tents, looking for trouble.
I huffed in a breath and blew it out, pulling my scarf tighter around my head. I’d recently gotten hair extensions, but, even with the head covering, the wind was playing havoc with my new do.
I made eye contact with Bernie. He gave me a mournful stare, like something out of an anti-depressant commercial for dogs. I imagined a canine version of one of those TV ads. Call your veterinarian immediately if you have thoughts of suicide, a desire to bite your companions, or a sudden urge to jump from a moving car.
My name is Kate Sexton, I’m a detective assigned to LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division or RHD. I was headed to Las Vegas for a short vacation with my roommates and canine partner, Bernie. My four-legged companion is large and woolly, thanks to a genetic brew of German shepherd DNA and something more mysterious and quite possibly alien that landed on earth a few millennia ago and released a sexually aggressive hairball.
Bernie is somewhat of a hero lately, thanks to his work on a couple of recent cases. He’s the first canine ever assigned to RHD, but in the last few weeks his paternal side has taken over. Bernie’s now a doggy-daddy thanks to a romp with a black lab named Thelma.
The lab belongs to a guy I had a brief relationship with named Mack McKenzie. Bernie’s doggy-style liaison had resulted in the recent birth of Betty and Bubba, making Mack and me canine grandparents.
“Speaking of boobs,” Nana said to us after she buttoned her blouse and made one of her habitual denture clicks. “I’m thinking of getting them done. It’s time to perk up Laverne and Shirley.”
“You named your breasts after a couple of characters in an old sit-com,” I said.
Nana clicked her dentures. “Why not? If a guy can named his willy Pinocchio, I can name the girls.”
I looked over at Mo who had glanced back at us and was frowning like someone suffering from terminal constipation. She turned to Nana. “I think you and your two old girlfriends need to lay off the Chica Loca.”
“No way,” Nana said. “I feel like a new woman thanks to Tex’s energy drink. My sex drive is also through the roof.”
“God help us all,” Mo said, turning her attention back to the highway.
Nana Hannah is our landlord and is the great grandmother of my other roommate, a transvestite named Prissy—what do you expect, I live in Hollywood! Nana’s sexual rejuvenation was the result of an elixir called Chica Loca that Natalie’s boyfriend, Tex, had concocted in his workshop. Tex is a brainiac with more gray matter than common sense. I had to admit that I’d tried the drink once. While I couldn’t attest to the fountain of youth or lusty benefits of the brew, I did know that Chica Loca was eighty-proof, something that Nana was demonstrating on a regular basis. With the Chica Loca working overtime in her system, Nana’s elderly boyfriend, Ace, who lived in Vegas, would probably soon be running for his life while being chased by Laverne, and Shirley.
Our trip was a spontaneous decision on my part to see my birthmother, a woman named Judie Crawford, who I’d never met before. Judie was a one-time actress who I’d only recently learned was my bio mom. Thanks to the Internet, I’d found some clips of her in a couple of old movies. I’d learned that we shared some physical traits, including green eyes, olive skin, and dark brown hair that has a mind of its own.
My father and Judie had a brief affair
, and she gave up her parental rights to me when my father and my adoption mother later got married. My dad and new mom went on to have two more children, before my father, who was also a cop, was gunned down in a park when I was just a toddler. As it turned out, a man named Ryan Cooper, my bio-mom’s old boyfriend, learned that she and my father had hooked up while Judie had been separated from him and he killed my dad in a jealous rage.
The crime was never solved, partially because Cooper threatened my adoption mother if she ever told anyone what happened. My mother had kept the truth about everything from me until recently, fearing for my safety if Cooper ever learned that Judie had a baby by my father. I was still in a state of shock after learning what happened, but I was determined to meet my bio-mom and, if I could, find Ryan Cooper and bring him to justice someday.
My phone rang as we passed the Barstow city limits. It was my partner, Charlie Winkler. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news. Lieutenant Edna just cut your vacation short.”
“What’s going on?”
“Remember that case Jessica worked about six months ago. The Olympic track star who was a DV victim killed by her boyfriend?”
Jessica Barlow was my nemesis and the world’s worst detective. I remembered the case because of the media attention it had brought. The murder of the young athlete, a victim of domestic violence, had been front page news.
“Jezzie Rose,” I said. “I saw the murder warrant on her boyfriend come through a few months back. What’s going on?”
“The suspect’s name is Barry Ralston. He was spotted in Bakersfield this morning. We’re short-handed. Lieutenant Edna wants you to meet me there, work with the locals, and see if we can bring him in.”
I patted the top of my head, thinking about jumping ship with Bernie and my unraveling hair extensions.
“I don’t understand, Charlie. Edna approved my vacation. I’ll be back in forty-eight hours. Can’t this wait until then?”
I heard something crunchy and held the phone away from my ear. I’d probably caught Charlie between bites of Fritos, or a Kit Kat bar, or something else meant for those who had fallen off the Jenny Craig diet wagon and had been run over.
My partner is in his mid-fifties, about fifty pounds overweight, with a bad heart. He’s a stress case, thanks to an out of control sixteen year-old daughter he was trying to raise on his own, and a love life that’s been up and down lately—and I’m not just talking about the effects of Viagra.
Charlie finally came back on the line. “Edna said and I quote, ‘Tell Sexton to meet you in fucking Bakersfield. The brass and the press have me by the fucking short hairs. You need to find Ralston, bring him in.’”
Our lieutenant, Henry Edna, had a vocabulary that started with the F’s and didn’t progress much beyond that letter of the alphabet. I knew there was no arguing with Henrietta, a moniker the press had recently given him, much to my boss’s chagrin. I ended the call after agreeing to meet Charlie that night at something called, The Snow White Motel, in Oildale, a suburb of Bakersfield where Ralston had last been seen.
I broke the news to my companions, explaining to Mo that she could drop me off and they could go on to Vegas. After a hearty round of protests and Nana asking for advice on how to deal with her pent up sexual energy, Mo turned off the freeway.
“What’s a Bakersfield?” Natalie asked. “Sounds like it’s a long way from sin city.”
Mo had found a turnoff and was headed north so that she could deliver me to my new destination. “You’ll see soon enough, baby sis,” she said over her shoulder to Natalie. “A working girl I once knew spent some time in the area. All I can tell you is that Bakersfield has more fruits and nuts than Hollywood, and I don’t just mean the kind that grows on trees.”
“I got laid in Bakersfield, back in the eighties,” Nana offered, twisting her lips up as her dentures lost their Fixodent grip and clicked. “I’ve still got the scars to prove it. The doctors said it was some kind of mutant Bakersfield crab. My vagina swelled up to the size of the Grand Canyon before it withered up like a dry cabbage. I haven’t been the same down there since.”
After a moment, the memory seemed to trigger further inspiration in Nana. “Hey, maybe I can also get my vajayjay rejuvenated when I have my plastic surgery. I hear they’ve got a new procedure that can plump you up again so that it looks like you’ve got Angelina Jolie’s lips down there.”
I desperately tried to keep the images Nana was conjuring up out of my mind as we drove. The closer we got to my new destination, the darker the sky became, until the world around us became a brown haze of low clouds, fog, and dirty air. A half-hour later, the realization of what was happening hit my companions as Mo pulled the Caddie off the freeway in Oildale and we searched for the Snow White Motel.
“What’s happened to the sky?” Natalie asked. “Reminds me of somethin’ out of the Wizard of Oz when the witch flew across the sky and spelled out, Surrender Dorothy.
“It’s called air,” Mo explained. “You think the air in LA is bad? In Bakersfield, the air is like something left behind after a bad chili cook-off.”
“I think I’m going to puke,” Nana said, holding her nose and sounding like she was underwater.
Natalie tossed her a paper bag from the In-N-Out burger stand we’d stopped at earlier. “You do the chunder down under in Mo’s car and we’re kicking you to the curb.”
The darkening sky, the bad air, and potential eruption of Mount Nana all began to affect my mood. I’d tried to put my recently failed relationships out of my mind but it was a losing battle.
I’d been on the rebound for over a year, thanks to my failed marriage to a man named Doug Witherspoon. Doug was an Assistant DA, who had the misfortune, AKA stupidity, of getting caught screwing his secretary, Phyllis the Squealer, in an interrogation room while a video camera was running. The movie, like a new release on Redbox, had made the rounds of every division in LAPD, ruining my marriage, and leaving me humiliated and in financial ruin.
Almost a year later, I’d hooked up with a detective named, Jack Bautista. Jack and I had a good thing going until he took a job at Homeland Security in Washington and everything started to fall apart. I learned that he’d taken the job only because his ex-wife was living there, something that he never bothered to tell me.
As it turned out, Jack’s ex was suffering from a serious illness, so I would have forgiven him, except that he’d been spotted with an attractive blonde at the airport while we were still dating. He’d recently explained to me that the blonde was his sister, but it had been too late, I’d already moved on, dating Mack McKenzie.
Mack is a private eye who works on high profile kidnapping cases that often take him out of the country. While we’d just become canine grandparents, Mack had run into Jack at a local park before I left for Vegas and realized my relationship issues were still in limbo. I guessed that things with Mack had gone south because of all this. I wasn’t sure, since we hadn’t had a chance to talk about what happened, but I knew that Mack wasn’t interested in someone who was a relationship disaster.
“That must be the place,” Natalie said, pointing at a sign that was lit up down the highway. “Looks like a bloody Snow White nightmare.”
“Hey, those lights remind me of Vegas,” Nana said, stifling her impending eruption with a denture click. “Maybe they got a bar there and some men.”
“Yeah,” Mo said. “I’ll bet you can hook up with one of the seven dwarfs for the night. Maybe they got one named Horny.”
It was after seven when we pulled into the motel parking lot. The strobe lights in the dreary landscape that spelled out the blue and white motel’s name seemed to be the only thing lit up for miles. The pulsing lights only partially spelled out the establishment’s name because half the bulbs were burnt out.
“Thanks for dropping me off,” I said to my roommates as I got my bag and then retrieved Bernie from the backseat. Sorry things didn’t work out as we planned.”
“I say we forget
the vacation and head back to Hollywood,” Natalie said to the others. “It wouldn’t be the same going to Vegas without Kate anyway.”
“Works for me,” Mo said, getting out of the Caddie and stretching out her two hundred-plus pound frame covered in chartreuse spandex that barely contained her enormous breasts. “I need some rest, though. Why don’t we all get a room for the night?”
“If we all room together you guys are going to cramp my style,” Nana said. Her gray eyes swiveled over to the motel grounds. “But none of the men around her look like my type. I was thinking maybe I could call one of those services like they’ve got in Vegas.”
“What you talk’n ‘bout, Nana?” Mo asked, hands akimbo on her wide hips.
Nana pushed her dentures against the inside of her lips that twisted into something vaguely reminiscent of a smile. “Gigolos R Us.”
We all did an eye roll large enough to encompass Mars, if the sky had been clear enough to see the planet.
I looked around the grounds of the Snow White that was drifting in and out of the fog. The motel was probably meant to replicate scenes from the Disney movie. The establishment was a single story, L-shaped blue and white stucco building. The rooms were designed to look like cabins, each trimmed in brown gingerbread with a twisting path that led to a whimsical, oddly-shaped door. The only problem was, it looked like the ginger had fallen off the bread about ten years ago, the grass walkways were now dirty brown, and the whimsy had given way to chintzy.
There was a courtyard with a large figure of Snow White near the motel lobby and adjacent restaurant, called The Enchanted Apple. The walkway was strewn with cutouts of the seven dwarfs. If you were so inclined, you could stick your face through each of the cutouts, taking on the persona of a dwarf. Apparently Natalie and Nana were so inclined. They began dancing around the courtyard, laughing as they mugged and became Doc or Bashful or one of the other odd little men.