Beautiful, Naked and Dead mm-1

by Josh Stallings

  No, it was more, she stood for hope, hope that the whole planet wasn’t full of cheap scams and low-class trades. She was real in a life full of fake. Fake tits, fake passion, fake vows given to fake friends. Everyone looked out for Number One and everything was for sale if you just knew the price. But not Kelly. She was the only person I counted as a true friend, and I had never seen the inside of her apartment. What did that say about my life? We spent so much time in the dressing room chatting, goofing off, sharing take-out, that rumors spread that we were lovers. Most of the dancers had no reference point for a man and woman being friends. Fuck them if they didn’t get it. Hell I didn’t get it, what did she see in me that was worth her time? Finishing my drink I dialed her number, more busy signal. Not good. Climbing onto my bike I headed the Norton back to Silverlake.

  Night fell soft and gentle as I moved up the apartment building stairs. I was moving quietly but not enough to avoid the watchful eyes of the white haired sentry, when she saw me looking at her she stepped quickly back behind the protection of her curtains.

  There were no lights on in Kelly’s apartment. After knocking I pulled out a thin piece of stainless steel. It was the size of a credit card. As long as the dead bolt wasn’t set, it would open any door. Slipping the card into the doorjamb, I felt it click, and the door opened. Stepping into her apartment uninvited, I knew it was a betrayal. But, if nothing was wrong, she’d never have to know I’d been there. Sweeping the living room with my Maglite I could see it was a nice, friendly room as inviting as her smile. She had an overstuffed sofa with an old-fashioned floral print slipcover. A framed print of water-lilies hung over the sofa, it was a Monet; I could tell because it said so under it. A scarred coffee table held a small ghetto blaster and a stack of cd’s. What was missing was any of the normal flotsam and jetsam one collects in life. No books or knick-knacks, no memorabilia, nothing to personalize this apartment to Kelly. The kitchen was tidy, a few dishes in the sink but other than that everything was in its place. In a dish-drainer were four plates, in the cupboard, four water glasses stood next to four coffee mugs, all matching and relatively new. It made me embarrassed to think of the Salvation Army rejects that filled my shelves.

  Opening the bedroom door I moved the light across the tan carpet and up onto the bed and across her pale feet. She was lying sprawled naked on a daisy print comforter, she looked peaceful as if she’d fallen asleep with her head resting on a rust red stain. The world skipped a beat slipping sync for a moment. She was Sleeping Beauty, this was a cartoon; any moment seven dwarves would burst through the door. I felt myself drifting in and out of my body for a moment as I looked down at her, no way this was real. I pulled the light off her face hoping that when I looked back she would be fine, but I found myself staring at the wall, it was splattered with blood, hair, bone chips and gray matter. Facts. Hard cold facts. From splatter to victim. No entry wound on her face. I could see it go down. They had forced her to suck on the barrel before they pulled the trigger. Entry wound back of her throat, exit wound back of her skull. I traveled down her body. Her left nipple was hanging on by a ragged piece of skin. They used pliers on her. Random small brown circles on both breasts, her belly… they burned her with a thin cigar too large to be a cigarette too small to be a robusto. A browning red stain smeared from her pubic hair down to her thigh. Jesus Christ they… back to her face. Her lifeless green eyes stared up at me. My knees went weak, I slipped to the floor, tears rolling out of my eyes. I hadn’t cried in years. I felt the weight of it all pressing down on me. In this whole shitty world couldn’t they leave this one perfect flower alone?

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but slowly out of the darkness a sound found its way to me. It was a soft whimper coming from behind the bathroom door. Crawling to my feet I opened the door. A four-month old strawberry blonde puppy bounced out. She had huge paws and a wrinkled loose skinned sloppy face. Her wild wagging tail swung her butt around as she showed me her joy at being set free. Suddenly, the pup stopped dead still and stared at the bed. Tail and head down she edged towards her dead mistress. She sniffed the hand that hung off the bed. Gently the pup licked Kelly’s limp hand.

  Leaning over, I kissed Kelly’s cold lips. The last thing on her mouth should be a kiss, not a gun. Looking down at Kelly I wiped the tears off my face and felt myself go cold. Tears never helped anyone, tears were a luxury for folks living in safe little houses watching flicks about kids with cancer. Out here in the real world, they didn’t do shit. Taking a dish towel from the kitchen I methodically moved through the apartment wiping my prints clean from every place I had touched. Using the towel to open the front door I was almost out when I felt eyes on me, the damn pup. Looking out from the bedroom with those big lost eyes. “What the hell do you want me to do with you, huh?” I said. The pup looked at me with a depth of sadness I had never seen in a dog so young. “Fine, come on then, but I swear to God the first time you piss in my house I’ll sell you to the taco truck.” She didn’t resist as I picked her up, she crawled up to look over my shoulder, watching her dead mistress all the way out of the apartment. The damn beast weighed at least forty pounds and was well on her way towards monsterhood. But one look in those sad eyes told me her heart was even bigger than her massive paws.

  I called the cops from a pay phone outside a liquor store. When they asked for my name I said it was Tom Waits, and that I lived at the corner of Heart Attack and Vine.

  Climbing onto my Norton I nestled the pup under my leather jacket and rode towards home. A heart-shaped tag on her collar read Angel, no phone number no address. No evidence to lead anyone back to her mistress. John Q Straight put his name on everything he owns, but fringe dwellers know better. Kelly knew it. Information is power so don’t give any out for free. I didn’t save Kelly, I guess caring for her dog was the best I could do… I knew it wouldn’t be enough. Wind whipped at my face and Angel snuggled down against my chest. I had seen death before. As a soldier in that mess they called a war, I had even caused it. Somehow this was different. She mattered more than all the rest, maybe because she wouldn’t matter to anyone else, not the cops, I knew how hard they would try for a dead cocktail waitress from a strip joint. Not the straight world, to them the women of my world were as expendable as last night’s condom. But she mattered…If only to me and the goddamn dog.

  Pounding down Highway 2 where it rose up over the 5, the Girls Girls Girls sign of Club Xtasy winked up at me from forty feet below. At seventy MPH, it would only take a flick of the handle bars to send me slamming into the low freeway wall. One quick crunch of metal and I’d be soaring out over the LA river headed for the great beyond where crap like this was all a dull memory. My knuckles went white on the hand grips. The will to survive battling it out with desire for oblivion. The pup trembled under my leather coat, it was as if she could sense how close we were to ending it all. Taking her with me wasn’t part of a deal I was willing to make. Carry your own water, leave the innocent be and if you have to step off the board do it alone. No passengers for that ride. We come in alone, we go out alone, end of story. Breathing out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding I loosened my grip. The green of Forest Lawn on my right, the brown green of Mount Washington on my left, and ahead in the distance the steep peaks of Angeles Crest. Just when you’re ready to burn it to the ground and walk away, this aging bitch we call a city can still catch you off guard with her beauty. Sure, she’s only a tarted up old whore, but when the light is right and you squint just a little, she looks young and fresh and almost hopeful.

  I pulled down an old sleeping bag and made a nest for Angel on the floor. After three or four therapeutic scotches, I curled up in bed and hoped for the noise in my head to stop. There was a thump on the foot of the bed as Angel pulled herself up. She curled up very small and didn’t look at me, like maybe I wouldn’t notice her if our eyes didn’t meet. I closed my eyes until they were only open a slit and watched her as she ever so slowly crawled forward, finally resting her
head on the pillow next to mine. Only then did she fall asleep. I wasn’t so lucky. I lay for a long time in the dark haunted by my fallen friend’s face. Haunted by what I knew of her last hours, by what I should have done…She reached out to me and I had failed her. I blew her off to play the hero for Piper and collect a lap dance. While I was squirting in my jeans, some freak was raping her. She was dying while I sat at the bar fucking with Turaj. If only I had gone straight to her place… If only… if… When at last I fell asleep it was listening to the rhythmic breathing of the pup.

  In the dream rivers of blood flow down off the granite mountains into a boiling red ocean. I can taste sweet, iron and salt in my mouth. A young Lebanese woman lays in the white sand, the pulpy surf pounding her dead bullet riddled body. Beyond the breakers, where the sea grows calm, Kelly floats on her back. She cranes her neck to look back at me.

  “Come on in, the water’s fine,” she whispers, a slight smile curling up her lips. That mischievous twinkle in her eyes invites me to chuck it all and join her.

  “I fucked up, Kell.”

  “You just did what you always do.” We spoke without moving our lips.

  “You paid the price.”

  “Women always pay the price. Now come out here and join me.” I wanted to obey her. I really did. But as I watched, she slowly sank below the surface and was gone without even a ripple.

  When I woke my first thought was of suicide. Again. Who would care or even notice? Closing my eyes I wondered if I even had enough drive to get up and look for my pistol. Something wet and rough dragged across my cheek. A big sloppy puppy face looked down at me with anticipation.

  “What the fuck do you want?” I asked, Angel stared at me, her tail starting to wag.

  “What?” Nothing, just big empty eyes. “Thanks a lot Kelly, what the fuck am I going to do with a dog?” I asked the ceiling.

  Pulling myself out of bed, I fried up some eggs, smoked ham, six cloves of garlic, a yellow onion and strips of stale tortillas into a hash. I split the steaming tasty mush with Angel. She wolfed the grub down in three big gulps filling her face wrinkles with egg. Grabbing a dish rag I scrubbed her face clean, “I don’t know what you are, but you sure ain’t no lady.”

  I rode out with her smiling face peeking out of my jacket, ears flapping in the wind. It was ungodly early, another strong point against me as pet owner. The only time I got up before noon was when I was in the Marines or the joint, and both places it sure as hell wasn’t willingly. But I had a plan, a way to duck my new best friend, so we hit the dog park. To enter we had to clear a small chain-link sally port. I closed the first gate behind me before opening the gate into the park. Chino Prison had one just like it, only this one had no razor wire or guards with high powered rifles sighted down on me. Across the dying lawn, a group of dog owners sat and stood around a cement picnic table drinking from travel mugs and laughing at some joke I couldn’t hear. They were all young, good-looking squares. Some had tats and piercings, the kind they got to impress the world with how edgy they were. All looked up when I cleared the second gate, smiles faded as if I had farted in church. A cute little blonde gal with spiked hair and army boots looked down, afraid that meeting my eyes might be an invitation for trouble. I was used to this reaction from the straight world. Their style came from ghettos and jails, but God forbid they actually had to meet one of us face to face. Maybe it was fear, maybe I called their street cred into question, or maybe I was an ugly motherfucker who nobody wants around unless they need him. Fuck them and the bitch they rode in on.

  I set Angel down, and she immediately ran past a pile of dogs fighting over a stick and over to a huge Rottweiler. Leaping up, she latched her needle teeth onto his upper lip. The big dog tried to shake her off, but she would tumble in the mud, get up and charge again. She made up for her lack of poundage with pure guts and tenacity.

  “Bruiser!” A large lady in a faded denim jumpsuit called out to the Rottweiler. “Play nice, or when she gets her size, you’ll wish you had.”

  I turned and started to walk away. Angel was cute enough, one of these dog lovers would take her in and I could get on with whatever the fuck I was going to do.

  “Are you friends with Kelly?” The big woman called out to me, “Well, I mean you must be, you’re walking her dog.”

  “You know Kelly?” I asked, startled to hear her name spoken here.

  “Yeah, I know that beautiful girl.” She was smiling openly as she came over to me. “Angel loves my Bruiser. She attacks him like this every morning. Luckily he’s so not alpha.” She talked to me in a comfortable way I wasn’t used to. Like Angel was my ticket into her secret society. “Every morning for the last month Kelly’s brought Angel down to play with my Bruiser. Sometimes we go get a cup of coffee at an outdoor cafe down the street. Tell you the truth when I first met Kelly I was hot for her. She told me she didn’t swing that way but I though I might convert her. Men can be such pricks… I mean not you, well maybe you I mean the jury is still out on that one, but you know what I mean.” She was speaking a mile a minute, like a speed freak on the end of an all night jag. But, it turned out Helen was a TV crime writer who drank too much coffee and spent way too much time alone, just her, her keyboard and Bruiser. After it was clear she wasn’t getting into Kelly’s shorts, they had struck up a true friendship. Kell was like that, easy to like, and I don’t ever remember her judging anyone. Once I asked her what she thought about the men who came into the club, the men who got lap dances. She said, “Like my grandma used to say, just people doing people things.”

  “Look, I don’t know you from nobody, but do you think you could take Angel. I’m just not up to being, whatever.”

  “Where’s Kelly?” Helen’s face dropped, she braced herself for bad news, as if she knew it was coming.

  “I don’t know, she’s gone, ok. Can you take the dog or not?”

  “Where is Kelly?”

  “Fuck, I’ll keep the damn mutt.” Picking up Angel I walked out of the dog park. I could feel Helen’s eyes following me all the way to the street.

  After depositing Angel back at my crib I went into Club Xtasy. Parking my bike I noticed the unmarked LAPD car out in front of the bar. I thought about rolling on, but they would want to talk to me sooner or later so it might as well be now. I slipped my.38 into a specially built hidey-hole under the seat of the Norton, the last thing I needed was to have them find an unregistered piece on a registered felon.

  Inside the club, Piper came rushing over to me, “It’s Kelly, Mo. Did you hear?” Before I could answer her, a thick-necked, short-haired, butch detective moved in on me. She had on jeans, running shoes and a nylon windbreaker. She was six feet if she was an inch. Big but not soft, she looked as though she lifted weights and hated men, me most of all.

  “You Moses McGuire?” she asked, daring me to deny it.

  “Yes.” I said in a dead tone. I’d spent enough time with cops to know smiling and saluting them only bought you contempt. The moment she saw me she knew we stood on opposite sides of that thin blue line that most straights don’t even know exists. She could smell the time I’d done.

  “Would you mind coming with me?” She asked, but it wasn’t a question so I followed her into the back office. Turaj was there, looking less bold than usual. An older White detective was sitting behind the desk; he had a crew cut, graying hair and sad tired eyes. “Take a seat,” the female detective told me. So I sat facing the White detective, with his partner towering behind me.

  “Moses McGuire?” The older detective asked. I nodded yes and he continued in a calm, even voice, “I’m detective Lowrie, that’s Sanchez, would you mind telling us where you were yesterday afternoon?”

  “If you tell me what’s going on,” I said. Sanchez smacked the back of my head, not as hard as she wanted, but hard enough to get my attention.

  “We ask, you answer. Is that simple enough for you?” Sanchez said, resting her hand on my shoulder. I looked at her hand then coldly up i
nto her eyes.

  “Unless your next move is to bust my ass, you better take your hand off me.”

  “Or what? I’m not one of your bikini bimbos. I’m not your punch of the week. I’m Detective First-Class Sanchez. You want a dance, then we’ll step out back. No? Afraid a girl might kick your ass?”

  “Mary Cruz. I’m sure Mr. McGuire wants to help us out.” Lowrie’s eyes flicked to her hand on my shoulder.

  “I’m sure he does, Stan,” she said, clamping her vice grip before removing her hand in a show of mock politeness. Rodney King, the LA uprising, the descent decree and two new Chiefs might have made the LAPD more citizen-sensitive but it hadn’t changed their hearts. Sanchez was a bully who would love nothing better than to play racquetball with my head while her partner held a gun on me. Lowrie looked up at her, shaking his head slowly.

  “My partner doesn’t like you. I keep telling her to switch to decaf, but she doesn’t listen,” Lowrie said in friendly tone.

  “You the good cop?”

  “No, I’m just a tired civil servant who’s been up all night staring at a girl’s brains on a wall and I would like some straight answers.”

  “Ok, I was here ‘til after four, then I went for a ride, ate a Tommy’s burger around ten then hit the rack,” I said, trying to keep my voice even and calm. Lowrie let out a long sigh. Rubbing his temples he stared at me with his tired eyes.

  “We know you went to see Kelly Lovelace after you left the club,” he said. My eyes flicked over to Turaj who looked down, the spineless prick had sold me out.

  “What happened to Kelly?” My question was answered with another smack to the head, this one harder.

  “Not real good at following directions are you?” Sanchez said. “We got you. Your life is a turd circling the toilet bowl right now and you don’t even know it.”

  “What happened to Kelly?” I said, looking Sanchez square in the eyes.